Barack Obama's time at Columbia, from 1981 to 1983, remains a mystery. He is known and remembered from his time at Harvard Law School, from 1988 to 1991. He is known and remembered by his classmates and professors at Occidental College, from 1979 to 1981. As well his time at Punahou School from fifth grade through High School.
It is only his time at Columbia, a mere two years, that remain hidden and unexamined. Why? Very likely, because Obama has something politically embarrassing to hide.
There are various theories floating around. One, put forward by Tom Maguire at Just One Minute proposes some sort of embarrassing involvement, however tangential, to the bombing campaign against the visit during that time to NYC by the South African Rugby team, the Springboks. The Weather Underground including Bill Ayers were involved in that bombing campaign. Bombs were set at JFK Airport, though no one was injured (thankfully).
Others have advanced depressive episodes, perhaps including treatment and/or hospitalization. Obama's first autobiography, "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," hints at episodes of depression, as well as teen age drug use. Others have speculated about drug use continuing into his College years, including at Columbia, and perhaps even selling drugs.
While this possibility cannot be excluded, I personally don't think it's likely. While it is true that Obama has confessed in both his first autobiography and speeches subsequent, to frequent drug use as a teen, his personality seems both censorious and abstemious. Rather, as documented by Stanley Kurz, Barack Obama's main aspect has not been getting high, but rather has been radical, anti-American and anti-White separatism.
In 1995, Obama as head of the Annenberg Challenge, openly repudiated integration and assimilation for Blacks and other minorities, instead embracing radical Black Nationalism and Separatism. His actions in disbursing the money backed up his rhetoric, all the money went to radical, anti-assimilationist organizations that taught not science and math, but racial grievances and angry, radical, separatist agendas.
No one remembers Barack Obama at all in his two years in Columbia University. That itself is suggestive. This fact indicates that he was simply not around to be remembered. At least not among student organizations, themselves of the radical and hard-left persuasion. Or his fellow students. Obama, atypically, seems to have taken no part in the social life at Columbia University. Not a single classmate can recall him.
While it is possible he was part of the Ayers bomb-throwing squad, it seems far more likely that he was elsewhere. That the reason Obama was not remembered was that he was not on campus much, except for class and exams, and that his social life did not include the mostly White campus radicals, or the mostly White Weathermen. But rather a different organization far off campus, that offered something else to Barack Obama. A sense of belonging.
Obama, by his own admission in "Dreams," says he consistently sought out the most radical, separatist, angry, and anti-American groups on campus. The Black nationalists and separatists, the gays, the feminists, and so on. What group, active in New York City at the time, offered even more radicalism, a sense of fellowship, "authenticity," and a connection to his abandoning but idolized father?
The answer is the Mosque.
All over the West, in Europe as well as America, many isolated, lonely, angry, radical, and non-White men seek out answers, fellowship, and meaning for themselves. Many find themselves at Mosques, most of which, according to the US State Dept., are funded by the Saudis and operate in the Wahabbist tradition. Men such as Mohammed Atta, or perhaps such as the twenty year old Barack Obama.
If Obama spent much of his time at a Mosque, in the company of devout, radical Muslims, it would explain why no one at Columbia, including his contemporary radical fellows, involved in anti-Apartheid protests, along with other issues, can remember him. It would explain both his life-long affinity with Islam (of which he has spoken and written favorably many times) and his ability, demonstrated on camera, to recite in Arabic the Muslim call to prayer. Such exposure, between 1981 and 1983, would account for his calling the Muslim call to prayer "the most beautiful sound" he has ever heard.
It would also be perhaps fatally embarrassing to his campaign for President. Particularly, if his associates from around that time later came to be indicted for various terrorist activities, such as the 1993 WTC bombings or the infamous "Bridge and Tunnel" plot of the "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel-Rahman, a rival to Osama bin Laden's lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahari, and founder of the Islamic Group. Omar Abdel-Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in the Federal Prison system at the Butner Federal Correctional Institution, for his role in that plot.
Such an association does not mean of course that Barack Obama is necessarily a Muslim, or a terrorist, but would be fatal to himself and the Democratic Party if revealed, in a political sense. Even if, as polls indicate, Obama wins the election and becomes President, he would be subject to removal by impeachment and conviction if such associations existed and were publicly revealed. Democrats, seeking political survival, would be sure to vote accordingly just as Republicans did during the Watergate scandal. Naturally, the opportunity for blackmail by said associates, if they did exist, would be enormous.
One could expect all sorts of concessions, to the Islamic world, and to terrorist Jihad groups in particular. Domestically as well as internationally, and concessions moreover sure to provoke a furious counter-reaction.
Naturally, it would be in the best interests of the nation for any such rumors to be either proved or disproved. Obama, unlike McCain or Palin or Biden, has a two year gap in his record about which almost nothing is known. He himself, in his autobiography, talks about that period very little, while discussing other chapters in his life extensively. No friends or associates from that period can attest to his activities or state of mind.
It would be good to know about Obama's activities either way. I am not optimistic, however, given that the puzzling lack of knowledge about Obama's two years at Columbia speaks to some sort of activity and social life oriented away from the campus and student social life.
...Read more
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Obama's Lead With Working Class White Women
Currently, Barack Obama has a lead over John McCain in the race for the Presidency. A recent Wall Street Journal story shows that this lead is entirely due to Working Class White Women. Concerns over the economy, and a negative image of Sarah Palin, produced by the Media, as "lower class" have convinced Working Class White women to vote for Obama. For the moment.
However, lingering concerns about Affirmative Action and it's unfairness, remain, and WILL poison Obama's chances of governing, should he win the Presidency as expected. A very strong backlash potential exists, for Obama and the Democrats, and victory paradoxically could produce their doom.
Obama's wavering margin of victory rests on voters like Marla Hightower, of Kokomo Indiana.
This concern is real because under the Affirmative Action regime, Whites ARE discriminated against, and because of demographics, are constantly declining in both absolute and relative numbers. Fewer White children relative to Hispanic (or really, that of Mexican Immigrants, both legal and mostly, illegal) children are born each year, and of course the wave of illegal immigration brings millions of new, mostly Mexican people inside the United States every year. Fewer Whites in both absolute and relative numbers means each White person bears more pain, in lost opportunities and overt discrimination.
It's worth noting that Affirmative Action has never existed in the West, in either the US or Europe, during a prolonged recession or depression. Indeed, the history of lingering depressions suggests ugly racial strife, as desperate men and women try to hold onto jobs in a labor market flooded with people willing to work for anything. The AFL worked hard during the Depression to exclude Blacks from the railroads, and the Roosevelt Administration, dependent on White labor support, did not object. Affirmative Action with a rapidly expanding economy, and an overwhelmingly White populace, is radically different from hard times where people are desperate for work, and to hang onto their jobs.
It is absolutely true that Affirmative Action discriminates against middle and working class Whites, to benefit Blacks and Hispanics (who are, practically speaking, Mexican origin). This discrimination has been held Constitutional, but has never been politically tested during a lingering recession/depression.
When, not if, White Working Class women get the "first fired, last hired" treatment during hard times, they will turn on him with a fury. Now, they may not be able to vote him out of office, right away, but they can vote out Democrats for Republicans in the next Congressional election cycle, two years from now. This treatment is inevitable, because Obama has no experience in balancing the competing interests of Working Class Whites, with that of the radical, grievance-based Black Nationalists and Yuppie White radicals that make up his electoral base. Even more importantly, neither does his team. Figures such as David Axelrod, Samantha Power, William Ayers, and John Lewis have no experience leading winning coalitions of the majority White Working-Middle Class. Let alone leading them during hard times.
Michelle Obama had a view of how politics work:
Telling Working Class White women, after the election, that they will have to give up their piece of the pie so someone else can have more, is not going to be winning governing politics. Particularly during hard times.
The Obama electoral coalition is fragile. It is based, mostly, on Blacks, Hispanics, White Yuppies, College kids, and Working Class White women. The latter have serious doubts about Obama, but lack confidence in McCain's ability to manage the economy. Obama's coalition, and that of the Democrats, could come crashing down. The WSJ story notes that Working Class White Men still support McCain, 58% to 34%, unchanged despite the economic meltdown. Working Class White Men don't like Obama, which is unsurprising given that Dems are organized against them, in political agendas. Particularly Affirmative Action.
A continued economic downturn could provoke massive political fights, as Working Class White Women turn on Obama and Democrats, in alliance with Working Class White Men. Affirmative Action demands that Whites get fired first, in layoffs. Obama and the Democrats, particularly if they win big victories, will be expected to "fix" things. Layoffs of Whites first at factories and other employers, to protect Black and Hispanic jobs, will create only enemies.
Obama's strategic weakness is that he and the Democrats have depended on patronage, in Black and Hispanic communities and organizations, and have not successfully promoted various goodies and handouts to the White working (and middle) class. Who still form the demographic majority of the nation. Neither Obama or Dems have the experience to manage shrinking revenues, in an extended recession, much less avoid punishing the majority White population.
Indeed, Obama's political career, plagued by doubts among Blacks that he is "Black enough," and resulting in the decades long embrace of Jeremiah Wright, Trinity United, Louis Farrakhan, and other anti-White Black Nationalists/Separatists, particularly in regards to the money doled out to Black Nationalist and Separatists during the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, as documented by Stanley Kurz, in the National Review, shows an inability to abandon radical, anti-White politics even when it is to his advantage.
The one point in Obama's career, when he had millions of dollars of money to dole out, shows he chose radical, angry, Black Nationalist/Separatist groups promoting grievance studies and anti-White sentiment.
Obama's ability to govern the United States, during hard times, is not encouraging. If anyone thought the Bush Administration's fights with the Left over Iraq and Afghanistan was going to be a fun time, just wait until White workers are fired first.
The Jessie Helms "Hands" ad will return in some form. Because long-term, the Democrats strategy of building their minority plus yuppies will not be able to refrain from punishing the majority of the population. They just can't help it.
...Read more
However, lingering concerns about Affirmative Action and it's unfairness, remain, and WILL poison Obama's chances of governing, should he win the Presidency as expected. A very strong backlash potential exists, for Obama and the Democrats, and victory paradoxically could produce their doom.
Obama's wavering margin of victory rests on voters like Marla Hightower, of Kokomo Indiana.
"I feel like a white female or a white male has fewer opportunities than the black man or the black woman because of all the special treatment and special programs they have gotten," said Marla Hightower. "If Obama is elected, what's going to happen?"
This concern is real because under the Affirmative Action regime, Whites ARE discriminated against, and because of demographics, are constantly declining in both absolute and relative numbers. Fewer White children relative to Hispanic (or really, that of Mexican Immigrants, both legal and mostly, illegal) children are born each year, and of course the wave of illegal immigration brings millions of new, mostly Mexican people inside the United States every year. Fewer Whites in both absolute and relative numbers means each White person bears more pain, in lost opportunities and overt discrimination.
It's worth noting that Affirmative Action has never existed in the West, in either the US or Europe, during a prolonged recession or depression. Indeed, the history of lingering depressions suggests ugly racial strife, as desperate men and women try to hold onto jobs in a labor market flooded with people willing to work for anything. The AFL worked hard during the Depression to exclude Blacks from the railroads, and the Roosevelt Administration, dependent on White labor support, did not object. Affirmative Action with a rapidly expanding economy, and an overwhelmingly White populace, is radically different from hard times where people are desperate for work, and to hang onto their jobs.
It is absolutely true that Affirmative Action discriminates against middle and working class Whites, to benefit Blacks and Hispanics (who are, practically speaking, Mexican origin). This discrimination has been held Constitutional, but has never been politically tested during a lingering recession/depression.
When, not if, White Working Class women get the "first fired, last hired" treatment during hard times, they will turn on him with a fury. Now, they may not be able to vote him out of office, right away, but they can vote out Democrats for Republicans in the next Congressional election cycle, two years from now. This treatment is inevitable, because Obama has no experience in balancing the competing interests of Working Class Whites, with that of the radical, grievance-based Black Nationalists and Yuppie White radicals that make up his electoral base. Even more importantly, neither does his team. Figures such as David Axelrod, Samantha Power, William Ayers, and John Lewis have no experience leading winning coalitions of the majority White Working-Middle Class. Let alone leading them during hard times.
Michelle Obama had a view of how politics work:
"The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more."
Telling Working Class White women, after the election, that they will have to give up their piece of the pie so someone else can have more, is not going to be winning governing politics. Particularly during hard times.
The Obama electoral coalition is fragile. It is based, mostly, on Blacks, Hispanics, White Yuppies, College kids, and Working Class White women. The latter have serious doubts about Obama, but lack confidence in McCain's ability to manage the economy. Obama's coalition, and that of the Democrats, could come crashing down. The WSJ story notes that Working Class White Men still support McCain, 58% to 34%, unchanged despite the economic meltdown. Working Class White Men don't like Obama, which is unsurprising given that Dems are organized against them, in political agendas. Particularly Affirmative Action.
A continued economic downturn could provoke massive political fights, as Working Class White Women turn on Obama and Democrats, in alliance with Working Class White Men. Affirmative Action demands that Whites get fired first, in layoffs. Obama and the Democrats, particularly if they win big victories, will be expected to "fix" things. Layoffs of Whites first at factories and other employers, to protect Black and Hispanic jobs, will create only enemies.
Obama's strategic weakness is that he and the Democrats have depended on patronage, in Black and Hispanic communities and organizations, and have not successfully promoted various goodies and handouts to the White working (and middle) class. Who still form the demographic majority of the nation. Neither Obama or Dems have the experience to manage shrinking revenues, in an extended recession, much less avoid punishing the majority White population.
Indeed, Obama's political career, plagued by doubts among Blacks that he is "Black enough," and resulting in the decades long embrace of Jeremiah Wright, Trinity United, Louis Farrakhan, and other anti-White Black Nationalists/Separatists, particularly in regards to the money doled out to Black Nationalist and Separatists during the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, as documented by Stanley Kurz, in the National Review, shows an inability to abandon radical, anti-White politics even when it is to his advantage.
The one point in Obama's career, when he had millions of dollars of money to dole out, shows he chose radical, angry, Black Nationalist/Separatist groups promoting grievance studies and anti-White sentiment.
Obama's ability to govern the United States, during hard times, is not encouraging. If anyone thought the Bush Administration's fights with the Left over Iraq and Afghanistan was going to be a fun time, just wait until White workers are fired first.
The Jessie Helms "Hands" ad will return in some form. Because long-term, the Democrats strategy of building their minority plus yuppies will not be able to refrain from punishing the majority of the population. They just can't help it.
...Read more
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
The Bailout — Failure of the Elites and the Populists Part 2
In my prior post The Bailout, Energy, and Nukes — Failure of the Elites and Populists Part 1 I discussed the failure of the elites to address anything significant, buoyed by nearly 60 years of economic good times and the ability to avoid making hard decisions.
But why haven't the populists been able to push aside the elites, and have their way? Culture 11 points out that the populists can only block measures, but lack the strength to pass their own measure and sweep away the elites who oppose them. Why?
It's helpful to look back on the last two gasps of populism, in California. Examining the history of Proposition 13, and Proposition 187, tells us a lot about why populism has failed.
Proposition 13 was the result of the California governing elites failing to control the growth of taxes, often forcing retired people out of their homes, as they became unable to pay ever-increasing taxes. Taxes, that in the aftermath of the Serrano v. Priest decision, were distributed equally to all school districts in California. Middle class families, though, could see easily that they could be forced out of their homes by taxes that had no limit. There was a large pool of angry, afraid, mostly White homeowners eager to limit the ability of the politicians to tax them out of their homes.
But Proposition 13 would have gone nowhere without both leaders, and widespread support. Howard Jarvis, retired newspaper man and small time manufacture, and Paul Gann, provided the leadership, including the grass-roots organization, the Taxpayers Association. The foot soldiers of Proposition 13, however, were mostly middle class, middle aged homeowners. Who reasonably feared being taxed out of their homes, in a time of flat or declining incomes and inflationary prices for almost everything.
California in 1978, was still a middle class, mostly white, state. Filled with people who mostly trusted each other, and participated in civic organizations like the Taxpayers Association. Populist political reform does not just happen, and requires both leaders and a "deep" organization to provide voter contact, phone banks, walking precincts, and the like. As well as elect supporters of populist programs and initiatives, and defeat opponents.
"Diversity" undermines this ability to form civic bonds, as Robert Putnam showed in his latest research. As he notes, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, only 30 percent of people trust each other, whereas that figure rises to 70-80% among North and South Dakota. The difference? The Dakotas are overwhelmingly white, and middle-working class white at that. Diversity, as Putnam's study shows, makes people hunker down. Distrust each other, the media, people of their own race, other races, and less volunteering. The website Volunteering in America shows that cities that are ethnically and racially homogeneous have much higher rates of volunteering. Minneapolis and Salt Lake City are number one and number two, respectively, in rates of volunteering (39, 37%). Los Angeles is at the bottom, at #44, with only 22% of the population volunteering.
The California of 1978 more closely resembled that of Salt Lake City or Minneapolis, than the "diverse" city it is now, with everyone hunkered down, allowing the elites to move unopposed.
By contrast, sixteen years later, while Proposition 187 passed, easily, with almost 60% of the vote, State Senator Art Torres called it the "last gasp of White America in California." He was proved quickly correct, as the courts found the political courage to overturn the measure, without facing populist fury, as Rose Bird was in 1986, when she was recalled (along with Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin) from the California Supreme Court over her opposition to the death penalty and other anti-crime measures.
The difference between 1978's populist wave and 1994's populist wave is diversity, made worse by the lack of married couples, and a declining middle class. The Volunteering In America study has an interesting set of numbers: volunteering peaks between age 35 to 54, the prime years for people to get married, have children, and become homeowners. Suburban homeowners volunteer more than urban renters. President Clinton's defense cuts devastated the Defense Industry in Southern California, causing many jobs to be lost as defense contractors consolidated. High paying jobs went away, and with them, many defense workers, who migrated to lower cost states such as Utah, Colorado, or Arizona.
In California, after Proposition 187 passed, outlawing public services to illegal aliens (very popular among a citizenry seeing themselves marginalized in their own state, by foreign nationals, there illegally and consuming most of the public services), politicians felt no heat in continuing to oppose it. Unlike Jerry Brown, who had opposed Proposition 13 as Governor, and upon it's passage immediately set about to support it, seeing the power of the populists, California Governor Gray Davis ended the state's appeals of court decisions overturning the proposition.
Lack of a large, robust, volunteer organization, leaders, and in particular low-level volunteer leaders guaranteed that Proposition 187 would be defeated. The same happened with California Proposition 209, prohibiting state institutions such as the University of California, from considering race, sex, or ethnicity. Yet Affirmative Action remains alive and well in all institutions, roundly ignored by political elites and the bureaucrats who follow them. Predictably, there are more lawsuits involving White and Asian students who allege a defacto Affirmative Action system discriminating against them in admissions to the University of California.
"Diversity," plus the high cost of housing in places like California or the Chicago Metro Area, or the New York City metroplex, where water or deserts limit the housing stock, chases away much of the middle class, and makes what limited middle class that exists far less likely to cooperate to preserve populist gains through the initiative process. Throw in declining marriage rates as women making their own money prefer to forgo marriage altogether in favor of first, the single life, then single motherhood, and you have a very good explanation of why populism has failed.
Not just in California, but across America. The "Taxpayer Revolt" that swept the nation in the late 1970's could not be replicated in today's America, filled with isolated, ultra-hip yuppies jocking for position, power, and status in an endless mating dance (think "Friends" where the show never ends). Across Europe, the same conditions — limited housing stock in job centers like London, Paris, and Amsterdam, endless yuppie consumerism in relationships replacing middle class marriage and family, and most of all lots of alien immigrants that introduce "Diversity" and massive distrust, have limited sharply the ability of populists to sweep out elites who resist populist measures.
This has done elites no favors. Joe Biden, a Senator for 36 years, has no new insights into the world of nuclear proliferation, and rising energy prices threatening in tandem the fundamental power of the West. For that matter, neither does Barack Obama, heir to a tired, worn-out 1960's radicalism, that was rejected by the people in the 1970's and replaced by Ronald Reagan decisively in 1981. Nor, arguably, does John McCain have any new ideas on the subject either. Only Sarah Palin, an outsider, with no connections, and a tradition of populist reform, has new ideas. Drill for oil in the US now for well paying blue collar jobs, and better energy independence. It won't solve everything all at once, but is an adult approach instead of wishing for a magic wand. It's no accident of course, that Palin comes from "Last Frontier" Alaska, a place where populism still reigns, and it was possible for an outsider like herself to actually sweep from power her own Party's sitting governor in a populist wave. Alaska's affordable housing, and good paying blue collar jobs speak for itself in that regard.
This suggests, strongly, that any new ideas, and leaders, and grassroots organizations will come out of the Mountain West: Idaho, Utah, Montana, Wyoming. Places with a largely homogeneous, White, and middle-working class population. Able to build large trust networks, and volunteer organizations. With people mostly married, in un-hip and un-trendy cities like Boise, or Salt Lake, or Bozeman. It's where the next Howard Jarvis, and Proposition 13 will come from.
All those other places? Too single, too hip, too isolated, and too distrustfully diverse to make a difference.
...Read more
But why haven't the populists been able to push aside the elites, and have their way? Culture 11 points out that the populists can only block measures, but lack the strength to pass their own measure and sweep away the elites who oppose them. Why?
It's helpful to look back on the last two gasps of populism, in California. Examining the history of Proposition 13, and Proposition 187, tells us a lot about why populism has failed.
Proposition 13 was the result of the California governing elites failing to control the growth of taxes, often forcing retired people out of their homes, as they became unable to pay ever-increasing taxes. Taxes, that in the aftermath of the Serrano v. Priest decision, were distributed equally to all school districts in California. Middle class families, though, could see easily that they could be forced out of their homes by taxes that had no limit. There was a large pool of angry, afraid, mostly White homeowners eager to limit the ability of the politicians to tax them out of their homes.
But Proposition 13 would have gone nowhere without both leaders, and widespread support. Howard Jarvis, retired newspaper man and small time manufacture, and Paul Gann, provided the leadership, including the grass-roots organization, the Taxpayers Association. The foot soldiers of Proposition 13, however, were mostly middle class, middle aged homeowners. Who reasonably feared being taxed out of their homes, in a time of flat or declining incomes and inflationary prices for almost everything.
California in 1978, was still a middle class, mostly white, state. Filled with people who mostly trusted each other, and participated in civic organizations like the Taxpayers Association. Populist political reform does not just happen, and requires both leaders and a "deep" organization to provide voter contact, phone banks, walking precincts, and the like. As well as elect supporters of populist programs and initiatives, and defeat opponents.
"Diversity" undermines this ability to form civic bonds, as Robert Putnam showed in his latest research. As he notes, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, only 30 percent of people trust each other, whereas that figure rises to 70-80% among North and South Dakota. The difference? The Dakotas are overwhelmingly white, and middle-working class white at that. Diversity, as Putnam's study shows, makes people hunker down. Distrust each other, the media, people of their own race, other races, and less volunteering. The website Volunteering in America shows that cities that are ethnically and racially homogeneous have much higher rates of volunteering. Minneapolis and Salt Lake City are number one and number two, respectively, in rates of volunteering (39, 37%). Los Angeles is at the bottom, at #44, with only 22% of the population volunteering.
The California of 1978 more closely resembled that of Salt Lake City or Minneapolis, than the "diverse" city it is now, with everyone hunkered down, allowing the elites to move unopposed.
By contrast, sixteen years later, while Proposition 187 passed, easily, with almost 60% of the vote, State Senator Art Torres called it the "last gasp of White America in California." He was proved quickly correct, as the courts found the political courage to overturn the measure, without facing populist fury, as Rose Bird was in 1986, when she was recalled (along with Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin) from the California Supreme Court over her opposition to the death penalty and other anti-crime measures.
The difference between 1978's populist wave and 1994's populist wave is diversity, made worse by the lack of married couples, and a declining middle class. The Volunteering In America study has an interesting set of numbers: volunteering peaks between age 35 to 54, the prime years for people to get married, have children, and become homeowners. Suburban homeowners volunteer more than urban renters. President Clinton's defense cuts devastated the Defense Industry in Southern California, causing many jobs to be lost as defense contractors consolidated. High paying jobs went away, and with them, many defense workers, who migrated to lower cost states such as Utah, Colorado, or Arizona.
In California, after Proposition 187 passed, outlawing public services to illegal aliens (very popular among a citizenry seeing themselves marginalized in their own state, by foreign nationals, there illegally and consuming most of the public services), politicians felt no heat in continuing to oppose it. Unlike Jerry Brown, who had opposed Proposition 13 as Governor, and upon it's passage immediately set about to support it, seeing the power of the populists, California Governor Gray Davis ended the state's appeals of court decisions overturning the proposition.
Lack of a large, robust, volunteer organization, leaders, and in particular low-level volunteer leaders guaranteed that Proposition 187 would be defeated. The same happened with California Proposition 209, prohibiting state institutions such as the University of California, from considering race, sex, or ethnicity. Yet Affirmative Action remains alive and well in all institutions, roundly ignored by political elites and the bureaucrats who follow them. Predictably, there are more lawsuits involving White and Asian students who allege a defacto Affirmative Action system discriminating against them in admissions to the University of California.
"Diversity," plus the high cost of housing in places like California or the Chicago Metro Area, or the New York City metroplex, where water or deserts limit the housing stock, chases away much of the middle class, and makes what limited middle class that exists far less likely to cooperate to preserve populist gains through the initiative process. Throw in declining marriage rates as women making their own money prefer to forgo marriage altogether in favor of first, the single life, then single motherhood, and you have a very good explanation of why populism has failed.
Not just in California, but across America. The "Taxpayer Revolt" that swept the nation in the late 1970's could not be replicated in today's America, filled with isolated, ultra-hip yuppies jocking for position, power, and status in an endless mating dance (think "Friends" where the show never ends). Across Europe, the same conditions — limited housing stock in job centers like London, Paris, and Amsterdam, endless yuppie consumerism in relationships replacing middle class marriage and family, and most of all lots of alien immigrants that introduce "Diversity" and massive distrust, have limited sharply the ability of populists to sweep out elites who resist populist measures.
This has done elites no favors. Joe Biden, a Senator for 36 years, has no new insights into the world of nuclear proliferation, and rising energy prices threatening in tandem the fundamental power of the West. For that matter, neither does Barack Obama, heir to a tired, worn-out 1960's radicalism, that was rejected by the people in the 1970's and replaced by Ronald Reagan decisively in 1981. Nor, arguably, does John McCain have any new ideas on the subject either. Only Sarah Palin, an outsider, with no connections, and a tradition of populist reform, has new ideas. Drill for oil in the US now for well paying blue collar jobs, and better energy independence. It won't solve everything all at once, but is an adult approach instead of wishing for a magic wand. It's no accident of course, that Palin comes from "Last Frontier" Alaska, a place where populism still reigns, and it was possible for an outsider like herself to actually sweep from power her own Party's sitting governor in a populist wave. Alaska's affordable housing, and good paying blue collar jobs speak for itself in that regard.
This suggests, strongly, that any new ideas, and leaders, and grassroots organizations will come out of the Mountain West: Idaho, Utah, Montana, Wyoming. Places with a largely homogeneous, White, and middle-working class population. Able to build large trust networks, and volunteer organizations. With people mostly married, in un-hip and un-trendy cities like Boise, or Salt Lake, or Bozeman. It's where the next Howard Jarvis, and Proposition 13 will come from.
All those other places? Too single, too hip, too isolated, and too distrustfully diverse to make a difference.
...Read more
The Bailout, Energy, and Nukes — Failure of the Elites and the Populists Part 1
Recently, the Website Culture 11 noted the failure of the populist forces to affect the debate significantly on the Wall Street Bailout, $700 billion and climbing. But what is just as notable is the failure of the elites to head off the danger, and provide any means to fix the economy in the first place. America, and the West, face a crisis: their elites are incapable of action, stasis-loving, and incapable of being removed by the populists.
The cause of the crisis, like so much else, is demographics.
First, the elites have been in power for a long time. Take say, Harold M Ickes, former White House Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton, and son of FDR's Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. Or perhaps TV/Movie writer-producer Joss Whedon, son of Tom Whedon, "Golden Girls" and "Benson" writer-producer, and grandson of John Whedon, writer of "The Andy Griffith Show" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show." There is also John McCain, son and grandson of US Navy Admirals, and CNN's Anderson Cooper, grandson of Gloria Vanderbilt.
Politics, entertainment and media, finance, and corporate executives suffer from stagnation. Sons and daughters of inter-connected elites, occupy most of the limited slots available, the problem getting worse, not better. A good example being the contrast between Jack Welch, son of a railroad conductor and housewife, who received his MS and Phd from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his successor as the head of GE, Jeffrey Immelt, son of the manager of the GE Aircraft Engine Division, Dartmouth BA and Harvard MBA.
Connections, of course, always matter, but they matter the most when the slots in executive power of one sort or another are limited, and advancement is through these connections, not producing value to organizations by means of new politics, new products, or new entertainment.
Part of this stagnation and interlocking, nepotistic networks, is due to the extraordinary success and wealth created in the post WWII period. The chart below, found on the St. Louis Federal Reserve Website shows how GDP simply exploded after WWII, particularly from the mid 1980's onward, despite the recessions (the shaded areas).
A rising economy can make even the most incompetent strategy seem worthwhile as fools and shrewd operators alike are buoyed by a rising economy. As Furious D notes on his website, Hollywood has a habit of making it's own production system even more costly, by constantly cheating it's creative people out of residuals. What Furious D calls a "self-fulfilling idiocy," where creative people, knowing they will be cheated out of residuals, demand the same monetary value up-front in salaries. A strategy so idiotic, and guaranteed to cause problems, that only an inbred elite, unchallenged by others, would follow it. Because a rising economy has fueled an increased appetite for entertainment, along with all other consumer goods. Even periodic recessions have not dampened this appetite, and looking at the growth curve, it's easy to see why.
But even more important, there have been few challenges to the establishment, allowing outsiders and non-connected people to move into the elites, and challenge established ways of doing things and long-held conceptions. In Hollywood, the current TV and Movie production models, with their high capital requirements and limited pool of distributors, have shut out those who would challenge orthodoxy, and as a side-effect, made films and television very, very liberal. In finance, in large corporations, and in particular, politics, the same people sit in "safe" positions, year after year. Joe Biden, for example, has been in the US Senate since 1972, a total of 36 years. A certain set of assumptions shared by Liberals oozes around all these institutions, like a toxic cloud: the US Military is generally bad, or incompetent, or war-mongering, or all three; Third World peoples and dictators are "noble savages" who want to "resist" US technology and modern industrial life. Christianity and Judaism are hopelessly corrupt, while other religions, including Islam but also Animism, Voodoo, etc. are spiritually enlightened and "pure." Certain "pure" White protagonists in movies and television show their spiritual superiority by throwing over the established, existing belief structure of Western Judeo-Christianity in favor of the more "authentic" native beliefs.
At it's worst in entertainment, this produces the sort of film or television production that Spike Lee dubbed "the Magical Negro" where a "magical" yet somehow crippled Black character (such as Michael Clarke Duncan in "the Green Mile" or Will Smith in "Legend of Bagger Vance") appears magically to save or spiritually enlighten a conflicted White protagonist.
The only directly bad short-term outcome with entertainment elites being stuck in amber, unchallenged by newcomers lacking connections, and hungry, is bad entertainment. In politics and business, however, it is deadly. Hollywood will eventually face, through high-speed internet connections, a global English speaking talent pool, and various cheap portals, productions like Felicia Day's The Guild that will eventually grow to direct challenges to their profits. At worst, Time-Warner and GE stockholders will lose money, probably lots of it. When the future of the US automotive industry or Wall Street is question, however, not to mention the US economy, that's a different story.
Energy prices, as shown in the graph below from WTRG have a fairly direct relationship to recessions, given how large an input energy costs are to the basic needs of a global economy, in the US or in Europe: production, transportation, etc. all depend on cheap energy, as does consumer spending. Dollars spent to travel to work and back, and heat and cool houses cannot be spent on consumer goods like televisions and DVDs, or durable goods like houses or cars.
However, if the theories about peak oil are correct, even with a global recession or depression, oil will not become significantly cheaper. Even worse, "Global Warming" fears can restrict oil and fossil fuel substitutes, creating a world of expensive energy under cap and trade schemes that only make money for middlemen and subtract rather than add to economic efficiency. Much of the post-war boom was fueled by cheap oil, the micro-computer revolution (increasing efficiency), and far better transport networks, including global ones, that made the costs of manufactured goods far lower and more affordable.
The elites grew up in a time of near uninterrupted economic growth, and cannot literally conceive of anything that could challenge it. People such as Barney Frank, or Charles Dodd, or Chuck Schumer, or Barack Obama, cannot literally conceive of the notion that the US government may not be able to bail out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, long term, and keep it's other obligations, because the economy might cease to grow constantly as it has in the post-War era, and might even contract. They cannot understand that the money just might not be there. That the government could be broke. Hence the irresponsible, non-serious approach to the economic crisis and the bailout. Words by Schumer and others to spark panic, pork-laden approach to the bailout, and tacking on all sorts of things to radical groups like ACORN and La Raza, in the billions, in a time of crisis.
The two greatest challenges that the US faced in the post-Cold War era, after 1991 when the USSR fell apart, has been securing a cheap global supply of energy, to keep the global economic system in place, and creating deterrence for itself and it's allies against nuclear proliferation and use of nukes by non-state actors.
Over and over again, new sources of energy, be they coal, oil, nuclear power, or wind farms off Martha's Vineyard (killed by Ted Kennedy), have been delayed, stopped, or hobbled by elites who simply assume that cheap energy will always be available. As the US and the world imports more of it's oil from the volatile Persian Gulf, cheap isolationism and moralizing overcome the US's real interests in keeping oil flowing, cheaply, from that vital region, including Iraq. Meanwhile, no new significant oil refineries have been built in the US since 1979, and drilling is severely restricted. Since Three Mile Island in 1979, no new nuclear power plants have been built.
Meanwhile, no strategy for dealing with the threat of nuclear proliferation by failed states. Pakistan is a nation where raw sewage floats by on the street in front of the Presidential palace during monsoons. A set of squabbling tribes, factions, and various jihad organizations, with a flag, Pakistan also has 100 + nukes. Under fairly dubious control, by the jihad-riddled Pakistani Army. Delivery by shipping container, is a real possibility, to places like Copenhagen, or New York City. With Iran racing towards nukes, the problem only gets worse. Once Iran has nukes, everyone else in the region will get them too.
Nuclear proliferation won't stop by negotiations, or sanctions, or anything else. Even military invasions at this point are likely useless, since there are simply far too many nations that want and are developing nuclear weapons. The basic technology is 63 years old, well understood, and merely a matter of time and money. Nations such as China, Russia, and North Korea, not to mention Pakistan, will sell to those who have the cash.
This is particularly dangerous since various factions can gain power by attacking the US. Khomeni gained absolute power in the aftermath of the Tehran Embassy hostage crisis, and shot his opponents. A small price to pay for Saddam's war. A mindset that Jimmy Carter and his administration never understood. But one evident in Osama bin Laden (who hoped to raise an exile Jihad Army to take over Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of 9/11), the "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman (the 1993 WTC bombing mastermind and convicted of follow-on attacks), and many others.
The Washington elites refuse to even consider that nuclear destruction of US or allied cities (such as Copenhagen, home to the Danish "Mohammed" cartoonists) is a real threat. Even Rand Corporations Bryan Jenkins, in a recent Wall Street Journal article, was quoted as saying he felt that any threat to the US from nuclear proliferation was "remote." When for forces aligned with Osama bin Laden, it is merely a question of suborning the guardians of Pakistani nukes, and smuggling one or two out of the country, to New York City or other places. Something difficult, but no more conceptually difficult than 9/11. After all, the nukes are already built!
Which comes to the real failure of the elites. Our leaders, throughout the West, have not faced serious challenges, and either been re-invigorated, or swept away and replaced with new blood, in generations. Difficult measures, which require domestic and foreign losers and winners, are avoided because nearly 60 years of uninterrupted good times have allowed the path of least resistance.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were allowed to fester, financing bad loans with government guarantees, because tackling the problem would have produced political pain, and there was little perception of long-term political disaster. Oil prices have been allowed to rise, and futile fantasies of "green" energy that has no environmental or social costs predominate energy policy, despite the clear link to US domestic and international prosperity and cheap energy. No new sources of energy to replace oil and gas have been created, and US and international dependence on the volatile Persian Gulf region only increased,while moralizing dominates the discussion of our forces there. Elites even now wish to abandon Iraq, now that it's oil production has been secured for the West, and give the Iranians defacto control over Iraqi oil production. Part and parcel of a campaign that produced both the statement by Barack Obama that he would like to see gas at $10 a gallon, and lack of any response by his rival John McCain, or the press.
But just as bad, and perhaps even worse, is the failure to articulate a set of policies designed to deter attack by forces essentially "hijacking" existing nuclear arsenals. What does Al Qaeda need to build it's own nukes if it merely "borrows" a few from Pakistan's existing arsenal, either without the government's or Army's knowledge, or with tacit backing by factions inside either one. How does the US deter Iran from using Hezbollah to nuke ourselves or an ally, to advantage one faction over another?
The seriousness of the situation, the equalizing effect of nuclear technology, allowing tribal leaders, or Revolutionary Guard faction leaders, the ability to decide if New York City and six million Americans live or die, simply has not been grasped by an inbred, aging, and fundamentally unserious and incompetent elite.
In my next post, I will explain why the populists have not been able to sweep the elites out of power.
...Read more
The cause of the crisis, like so much else, is demographics.
First, the elites have been in power for a long time. Take say, Harold M Ickes, former White House Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton, and son of FDR's Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. Or perhaps TV/Movie writer-producer Joss Whedon, son of Tom Whedon, "Golden Girls" and "Benson" writer-producer, and grandson of John Whedon, writer of "The Andy Griffith Show" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show." There is also John McCain, son and grandson of US Navy Admirals, and CNN's Anderson Cooper, grandson of Gloria Vanderbilt.
Politics, entertainment and media, finance, and corporate executives suffer from stagnation. Sons and daughters of inter-connected elites, occupy most of the limited slots available, the problem getting worse, not better. A good example being the contrast between Jack Welch, son of a railroad conductor and housewife, who received his MS and Phd from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his successor as the head of GE, Jeffrey Immelt, son of the manager of the GE Aircraft Engine Division, Dartmouth BA and Harvard MBA.
Connections, of course, always matter, but they matter the most when the slots in executive power of one sort or another are limited, and advancement is through these connections, not producing value to organizations by means of new politics, new products, or new entertainment.
Part of this stagnation and interlocking, nepotistic networks, is due to the extraordinary success and wealth created in the post WWII period. The chart below, found on the St. Louis Federal Reserve Website shows how GDP simply exploded after WWII, particularly from the mid 1980's onward, despite the recessions (the shaded areas).
A rising economy can make even the most incompetent strategy seem worthwhile as fools and shrewd operators alike are buoyed by a rising economy. As Furious D notes on his website, Hollywood has a habit of making it's own production system even more costly, by constantly cheating it's creative people out of residuals. What Furious D calls a "self-fulfilling idiocy," where creative people, knowing they will be cheated out of residuals, demand the same monetary value up-front in salaries. A strategy so idiotic, and guaranteed to cause problems, that only an inbred elite, unchallenged by others, would follow it. Because a rising economy has fueled an increased appetite for entertainment, along with all other consumer goods. Even periodic recessions have not dampened this appetite, and looking at the growth curve, it's easy to see why.
But even more important, there have been few challenges to the establishment, allowing outsiders and non-connected people to move into the elites, and challenge established ways of doing things and long-held conceptions. In Hollywood, the current TV and Movie production models, with their high capital requirements and limited pool of distributors, have shut out those who would challenge orthodoxy, and as a side-effect, made films and television very, very liberal. In finance, in large corporations, and in particular, politics, the same people sit in "safe" positions, year after year. Joe Biden, for example, has been in the US Senate since 1972, a total of 36 years. A certain set of assumptions shared by Liberals oozes around all these institutions, like a toxic cloud: the US Military is generally bad, or incompetent, or war-mongering, or all three; Third World peoples and dictators are "noble savages" who want to "resist" US technology and modern industrial life. Christianity and Judaism are hopelessly corrupt, while other religions, including Islam but also Animism, Voodoo, etc. are spiritually enlightened and "pure." Certain "pure" White protagonists in movies and television show their spiritual superiority by throwing over the established, existing belief structure of Western Judeo-Christianity in favor of the more "authentic" native beliefs.
At it's worst in entertainment, this produces the sort of film or television production that Spike Lee dubbed "the Magical Negro" where a "magical" yet somehow crippled Black character (such as Michael Clarke Duncan in "the Green Mile" or Will Smith in "Legend of Bagger Vance") appears magically to save or spiritually enlighten a conflicted White protagonist.
The only directly bad short-term outcome with entertainment elites being stuck in amber, unchallenged by newcomers lacking connections, and hungry, is bad entertainment. In politics and business, however, it is deadly. Hollywood will eventually face, through high-speed internet connections, a global English speaking talent pool, and various cheap portals, productions like Felicia Day's The Guild that will eventually grow to direct challenges to their profits. At worst, Time-Warner and GE stockholders will lose money, probably lots of it. When the future of the US automotive industry or Wall Street is question, however, not to mention the US economy, that's a different story.
Energy prices, as shown in the graph below from WTRG have a fairly direct relationship to recessions, given how large an input energy costs are to the basic needs of a global economy, in the US or in Europe: production, transportation, etc. all depend on cheap energy, as does consumer spending. Dollars spent to travel to work and back, and heat and cool houses cannot be spent on consumer goods like televisions and DVDs, or durable goods like houses or cars.
However, if the theories about peak oil are correct, even with a global recession or depression, oil will not become significantly cheaper. Even worse, "Global Warming" fears can restrict oil and fossil fuel substitutes, creating a world of expensive energy under cap and trade schemes that only make money for middlemen and subtract rather than add to economic efficiency. Much of the post-war boom was fueled by cheap oil, the micro-computer revolution (increasing efficiency), and far better transport networks, including global ones, that made the costs of manufactured goods far lower and more affordable.
The elites grew up in a time of near uninterrupted economic growth, and cannot literally conceive of anything that could challenge it. People such as Barney Frank, or Charles Dodd, or Chuck Schumer, or Barack Obama, cannot literally conceive of the notion that the US government may not be able to bail out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, long term, and keep it's other obligations, because the economy might cease to grow constantly as it has in the post-War era, and might even contract. They cannot understand that the money just might not be there. That the government could be broke. Hence the irresponsible, non-serious approach to the economic crisis and the bailout. Words by Schumer and others to spark panic, pork-laden approach to the bailout, and tacking on all sorts of things to radical groups like ACORN and La Raza, in the billions, in a time of crisis.
The two greatest challenges that the US faced in the post-Cold War era, after 1991 when the USSR fell apart, has been securing a cheap global supply of energy, to keep the global economic system in place, and creating deterrence for itself and it's allies against nuclear proliferation and use of nukes by non-state actors.
Over and over again, new sources of energy, be they coal, oil, nuclear power, or wind farms off Martha's Vineyard (killed by Ted Kennedy), have been delayed, stopped, or hobbled by elites who simply assume that cheap energy will always be available. As the US and the world imports more of it's oil from the volatile Persian Gulf, cheap isolationism and moralizing overcome the US's real interests in keeping oil flowing, cheaply, from that vital region, including Iraq. Meanwhile, no new significant oil refineries have been built in the US since 1979, and drilling is severely restricted. Since Three Mile Island in 1979, no new nuclear power plants have been built.
Meanwhile, no strategy for dealing with the threat of nuclear proliferation by failed states. Pakistan is a nation where raw sewage floats by on the street in front of the Presidential palace during monsoons. A set of squabbling tribes, factions, and various jihad organizations, with a flag, Pakistan also has 100 + nukes. Under fairly dubious control, by the jihad-riddled Pakistani Army. Delivery by shipping container, is a real possibility, to places like Copenhagen, or New York City. With Iran racing towards nukes, the problem only gets worse. Once Iran has nukes, everyone else in the region will get them too.
Nuclear proliferation won't stop by negotiations, or sanctions, or anything else. Even military invasions at this point are likely useless, since there are simply far too many nations that want and are developing nuclear weapons. The basic technology is 63 years old, well understood, and merely a matter of time and money. Nations such as China, Russia, and North Korea, not to mention Pakistan, will sell to those who have the cash.
This is particularly dangerous since various factions can gain power by attacking the US. Khomeni gained absolute power in the aftermath of the Tehran Embassy hostage crisis, and shot his opponents. A small price to pay for Saddam's war. A mindset that Jimmy Carter and his administration never understood. But one evident in Osama bin Laden (who hoped to raise an exile Jihad Army to take over Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of 9/11), the "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman (the 1993 WTC bombing mastermind and convicted of follow-on attacks), and many others.
The Washington elites refuse to even consider that nuclear destruction of US or allied cities (such as Copenhagen, home to the Danish "Mohammed" cartoonists) is a real threat. Even Rand Corporations Bryan Jenkins, in a recent Wall Street Journal article, was quoted as saying he felt that any threat to the US from nuclear proliferation was "remote." When for forces aligned with Osama bin Laden, it is merely a question of suborning the guardians of Pakistani nukes, and smuggling one or two out of the country, to New York City or other places. Something difficult, but no more conceptually difficult than 9/11. After all, the nukes are already built!
Which comes to the real failure of the elites. Our leaders, throughout the West, have not faced serious challenges, and either been re-invigorated, or swept away and replaced with new blood, in generations. Difficult measures, which require domestic and foreign losers and winners, are avoided because nearly 60 years of uninterrupted good times have allowed the path of least resistance.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were allowed to fester, financing bad loans with government guarantees, because tackling the problem would have produced political pain, and there was little perception of long-term political disaster. Oil prices have been allowed to rise, and futile fantasies of "green" energy that has no environmental or social costs predominate energy policy, despite the clear link to US domestic and international prosperity and cheap energy. No new sources of energy to replace oil and gas have been created, and US and international dependence on the volatile Persian Gulf region only increased,while moralizing dominates the discussion of our forces there. Elites even now wish to abandon Iraq, now that it's oil production has been secured for the West, and give the Iranians defacto control over Iraqi oil production. Part and parcel of a campaign that produced both the statement by Barack Obama that he would like to see gas at $10 a gallon, and lack of any response by his rival John McCain, or the press.
But just as bad, and perhaps even worse, is the failure to articulate a set of policies designed to deter attack by forces essentially "hijacking" existing nuclear arsenals. What does Al Qaeda need to build it's own nukes if it merely "borrows" a few from Pakistan's existing arsenal, either without the government's or Army's knowledge, or with tacit backing by factions inside either one. How does the US deter Iran from using Hezbollah to nuke ourselves or an ally, to advantage one faction over another?
The seriousness of the situation, the equalizing effect of nuclear technology, allowing tribal leaders, or Revolutionary Guard faction leaders, the ability to decide if New York City and six million Americans live or die, simply has not been grasped by an inbred, aging, and fundamentally unserious and incompetent elite.
In my next post, I will explain why the populists have not been able to sweep the elites out of power.
...Read more
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Dating Capital
In my post Modern Romance, reader K notes that a possible explanation of "Dating Capital" can explain the disparity in dating outcomes. That men with friends who give them pickup pointers, and provide "wingman" services, can create more success for their buddies in the way that girlfriends can for their female friends, with make-overs and better haircuts and the like.
In order to test this hypothesis, it's probably useful to look at how two hypothetical 19 year old men would fare, in different eras, and compare their "dating capital" or skills gained by social networks to be able to attract women in a relationship. Let's create a hypothetical 19 year old man in Greeley, Colorado, in 1949. Create another, hypothetical 19 year old man in say, Boulder, Colorado, in 1998. Let's compare the two, their resources, and their hypothetical outcomes, to explore how they pass through the dating and relationship market.
First, let's examine the 19 year old man in 1998's Boulder Colorado. If he was lucky enough to mature early, physically, in High School, and have or create enough status for himself as an attractive male, he will have plenty of success with women and need very little "game" or "Dating Capital." He will have experienced early success with women, feel no anxiety or social fear (of rejection) in approaching them, and making conversation. He is likely to do well in College with the opposite sex, particularly if he maintains a high social status. With sports, particularly football or basketball, giving him high social status and appeal, or inherited wealth that affords outward markers like fancy cars, and the like. At no point, of course, will he find his grades reflect dating success. Grades and academic success are quite irrelevant, if not harmful. A successful young man with women will note that his contemporaries who do well in school, have in general very poor success with women. Principally, because lower levels of testosterone are associated with higher intelligence, and women avoid "smart men" who are "nerdy" like the plague. One study even showed that only 65% of MIT graduate students ever had sex. Further illustrating that process: 0% of Studio Art majors were virgins, but 83% of Biochem and Math majors were virgins. Any dating savvy young man with high status among women will conceal above average intelligence, or channel it into "high testosterone" activities such as fighter pilot, etc.
After College, a High Status, "Alpha" male will continue, quite likely, to find success among women, as long as he retains his status, by working in occupations that are found "sexy" by women, including occupations such as lawyer, advertising, media, and so on. Avoiding professions such as engineering, computer programming, accounting, and the like which women find "nerdy" and associate with lower testosterone men. Ten years later, at age 29, the young man is likely to have little problems finding dates, approaching women, and is likely to be quite comfortable with his romantic life.
However, there are unlikely to be very many men like this. The increase in divorce and single motherhood means less chance of inherited wealth. A few genetic lottery winners with early puberty and athletic success are likely to define this crowd, and those naturally handsome and tall. Probably, we are looking in the neighborhood of 10% of the 19 year olds from 1998.
But what of the hypothetical 19 year old in 1998, who did not mature early, physically,or find high status through athletics, or inherit wealth and status, or some combination? If he has an older brother to mentor him, or various friends who are able to teach him the trick of appearing high status, certainly he can do better for himself. It's likely that the increase in attendance in College is at least as much the desire to be around girls more. A blue collar auto mechanic of 19, competing for the same girls in a bar, as a 19 year old sophomore at the local college, is likely to lose out, all things being equal. Meanwhile, lots of alcohol and various social events, allow young men and women to intermingle, often inebriated past social inhibitions (and good judgment). Even young men who are not particularly "Alpha" or socially dominant can be "lucky" enough, in the words from the movie "Superbad," to be one girl's "mistake."
Increasingly, College, and particularly non-elite colleges, serve as social intermediary institutions to match young people, though only temporarily. The way Church and town dances and social events did, to bring young people of the opposite sex together. Elite Colleges, of course, like Harvard or Yale, have admissions generally balanced equally among men and women, while lower tier schools such as say, Syracuse University, have 56% women, and 44% men as their student body. The higher percentage of women in less elite schools pretty much requires the words of John Lovitz on "Saturday Night Live," ... "Ladies, lower your standards."
Naturally, competition for the most "Alpha" of men at most colleges is fierce. Conservative women commentators such as National Review's Mona Charen, or City Journal's Kay Hymowitz's finger men as a whole as the reason young women "act slutty" in their words, with more explicit behavior (compared to the past), clothing, and more. Young women clearly would prefer not to lower their standards, and the conduct condemned is not that of young women just mindlessly acting like robots to young men's demands as a group, but rather the need to capture the most Alpha of men in competition with many, many other women. It's a numbers game — the pool of Alpha men is smaller, and the pool of female competitors is larger. Hence the need to up the ante with more available sexual behavior, more revealing clothing, more consumption of alcohol and so on.
Exacerbated by the lack of any larger social context, of course. College years are conducted mostly in social isolation, with peers as the standards of conduct. Parties, and other socialization, do not take place among friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, and the like. That is a massive shift over time from the world of 1949.
But it's after College that the lack of "Dating Capital" does in the romantic success of the non dominant, non-Alpha male, in the case of the 19 year old from 1998.
The hardest problem is meeting young women. As reader K noted, young men and women in large organizations might well be suited for each other, but would never meet in socially appropriate ways to conducting romance. A young male computer programmer might never meet other than a casual pass in the hallways, a young female human resources officer. However, the young woman, assuming she is attractive on some baseline, will have no problems meeting young men in bars. Increasingly, women are opting for single motherhood and rejecting the messy compromises of marriage. One might even argue that a man would have to have a much larger premium over a woman's status and wealth and position in life in order to be considered for marriage. Given women's ability to form single mother families on their own.
Let's examine our hypothetical young man, who was 19 in 1998, after College. Let's assume he had little "game" but was lucky enough in College, fueled by lots of alcohol, "mistakes," and the imbalance in the sex ratio. Suddenly, in the big city after graduation, his partial success in College comes to a screeching stop, and he's back in High School again. His dating success and failures are entirely dependent on his ability to impress his female peers in bars, within a few seconds. If he has friends who are successful with women, and are inclined to teach him how to proceed successfully, he has hope. If not, he has none, and soon falls into substitution with pornography and video games and other entertainments.
Meanwhile, young women have a large cultural resource available to them, in how to become more attractive. Their dating capital, besides their friends, resides in magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Glamor, and the like. Movies, television shows, books, and daytime talk shows like Oprah are filled with make-overs designed to maximize attractiveness. Young men, on the other hand, have the "lad" magazines such as Maxim, with pictures of young women and not much advice on how to approach them. Their dating capital is essentially, their friends and the Pick Up Artist books, seminars, and websites. It's catch as catch can, with most young men likely to lose out. There is no systemic effort to clue them into the requirements of women. Part of the problem is that "excessive" interest in women, including much effort spent in picking them up, is considered "unmanly," in the way that Don Juans are considered, still, unseemly and effeminate. A common complaint among the Pick Up artists like "Mystery" is that their fathers and larger society did not teach them the skills they needed to attract women.
Which is precisely the point. In 1949, mediating institutions such as Churches and local organizations in towns and cities put young men and women together. "Game" was not needed because women's selection criteria included what their friends, family, and community would think and approve of their choices. Anonymous hookups were not very common, and young women already knew well of a man's character, relatives, and conduct before he ever approached her at a dance. The world of 1949, Greeley Colorado, did not have anonymous strangers meeting in a bar, based on purely physical attributes and "Game." Let's now examine our hypothetical 19 year old in 1949.
Assuming the young man matured early, again like his hypothetical counterpart in 1998, and had relatively high status, he would have had little problem with women in his life. It's quite likely that he would have married relatively early, compared to his counterpart in 1998, given the relative marriage rates derived from the US Census Bureau below:
[Click on Graph to Enlarge It]
But of course, it's not him we are interested in. Rather, it is the 19 year old in 1949, who probably would not have had great success in High School with girls, but after High School would have had a far different world in front of him.
That world, would include far greater "Dating Capital" because of social intermediary institutions. In Greeley, that would include the staid Baptist socials and dances that Sayyid Qutb found to be a hotbed of lust and depravity. Game was far less a determinant of success, because each young women knew well each potential suitor, besides his demeanor and appearance. While he might be smooth and suave, in his approach (or lacking), she would know who his parents were, how much money he was likely to make, if he had any major character flaws, what his brothers and sisters were like, in other words a fairly complete picture of the man and his relatives, not to mention his standing in the community and what most of her family and acquaintances thought of him. Any choice a young woman made would not be an anonymous, one-time hook-up, but taking place in front everyone. Including, her parents, possibly even grandparents. Young men who were of "good character" but lacked Game had lowered success, perhaps, compared to those who had better Game, but not decisively. They got married in far greater numbers than those of today.
Lack of anonymous, consequence-less choice, available contraception that was both cheap and reliable, and far more information to both men and women, made the young man of 1949, far different. Not only did he marry earlier, and in greater numbers, but there were not penalties for lacking College degrees as there is today in the dating market. Partly that was because of cheaper real estate, higher real incomes for blue collar men. But more because there were a host of institutions that served to bring young men and women together after they already had a good idea of who they were. Even in big cities, people lived in fairly intact, stable, ethnic neighborhoods. This was as true of New York as it was of Chicago, or Pittsburgh. Neighborhood dances, often sponsored by neighborhood churches, were the primary means of finding a mate.
It's only fairly recently, after all, that the Pick Up Artists have become a feature in Western life. In 1949 they would have seemed as out of place as a Rap video played before the staid burghers of Greeley. Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart were considered the models of masculinity. A man was supposed to be stalwart, loyal, true, and tough, not smooth, highly verbal, and attuned to women's moods. Today, we have "sensitive" screen stars such as Josh Hartnett, Shia LaBeouf, and Leonardo DiCaprio. That cultural shift seems to be part of the huge change in what women selected for, over time.
In the world of 1949, it seems that many other aspects of a man's character and personality mattered as much as Game, effectively neutralizing the Dating Capital advantage, or alternatively, spreading out Dating Capital by making other aspects besides smoothness, power/status, and confidence matter.
The world of 1949, however, is unlikely to ever return. Is there a systemic way to spread out Dating Capital to most young men? It doesn't seem possible, because no matter how well known "Game" becomes, there will always be a race to be the one with the "most" Game, as women simply choose the most Game-worthy candidate. Moreover, much of the spreading of game seems haphazard. Those with friends who have it, and are willing to share, and teach, benefit, those who do not, largely remain outside, clueless. It would seem almost impossible for women's choices to be informed by factors other than Game in a bar, given the largely rootless, anonymous urban culture most young people live within. The world of 1949, where even those who lacked "Game" (most men) had a good chance at romance and marriage, depended after all on stability, community, and social connections. All of that, is just gone.
After all, a man in 1949's Greeley Colorado would be astounded to learn that a bit more than fifty years later, men would pay $50 an hour just to have someone alongside them, giving them tips on how to pick up women. That's what the Church dances were for!
...Read more
In order to test this hypothesis, it's probably useful to look at how two hypothetical 19 year old men would fare, in different eras, and compare their "dating capital" or skills gained by social networks to be able to attract women in a relationship. Let's create a hypothetical 19 year old man in Greeley, Colorado, in 1949. Create another, hypothetical 19 year old man in say, Boulder, Colorado, in 1998. Let's compare the two, their resources, and their hypothetical outcomes, to explore how they pass through the dating and relationship market.
First, let's examine the 19 year old man in 1998's Boulder Colorado. If he was lucky enough to mature early, physically, in High School, and have or create enough status for himself as an attractive male, he will have plenty of success with women and need very little "game" or "Dating Capital." He will have experienced early success with women, feel no anxiety or social fear (of rejection) in approaching them, and making conversation. He is likely to do well in College with the opposite sex, particularly if he maintains a high social status. With sports, particularly football or basketball, giving him high social status and appeal, or inherited wealth that affords outward markers like fancy cars, and the like. At no point, of course, will he find his grades reflect dating success. Grades and academic success are quite irrelevant, if not harmful. A successful young man with women will note that his contemporaries who do well in school, have in general very poor success with women. Principally, because lower levels of testosterone are associated with higher intelligence, and women avoid "smart men" who are "nerdy" like the plague. One study even showed that only 65% of MIT graduate students ever had sex. Further illustrating that process: 0% of Studio Art majors were virgins, but 83% of Biochem and Math majors were virgins. Any dating savvy young man with high status among women will conceal above average intelligence, or channel it into "high testosterone" activities such as fighter pilot, etc.
After College, a High Status, "Alpha" male will continue, quite likely, to find success among women, as long as he retains his status, by working in occupations that are found "sexy" by women, including occupations such as lawyer, advertising, media, and so on. Avoiding professions such as engineering, computer programming, accounting, and the like which women find "nerdy" and associate with lower testosterone men. Ten years later, at age 29, the young man is likely to have little problems finding dates, approaching women, and is likely to be quite comfortable with his romantic life.
However, there are unlikely to be very many men like this. The increase in divorce and single motherhood means less chance of inherited wealth. A few genetic lottery winners with early puberty and athletic success are likely to define this crowd, and those naturally handsome and tall. Probably, we are looking in the neighborhood of 10% of the 19 year olds from 1998.
But what of the hypothetical 19 year old in 1998, who did not mature early, physically,or find high status through athletics, or inherit wealth and status, or some combination? If he has an older brother to mentor him, or various friends who are able to teach him the trick of appearing high status, certainly he can do better for himself. It's likely that the increase in attendance in College is at least as much the desire to be around girls more. A blue collar auto mechanic of 19, competing for the same girls in a bar, as a 19 year old sophomore at the local college, is likely to lose out, all things being equal. Meanwhile, lots of alcohol and various social events, allow young men and women to intermingle, often inebriated past social inhibitions (and good judgment). Even young men who are not particularly "Alpha" or socially dominant can be "lucky" enough, in the words from the movie "Superbad," to be one girl's "mistake."
Increasingly, College, and particularly non-elite colleges, serve as social intermediary institutions to match young people, though only temporarily. The way Church and town dances and social events did, to bring young people of the opposite sex together. Elite Colleges, of course, like Harvard or Yale, have admissions generally balanced equally among men and women, while lower tier schools such as say, Syracuse University, have 56% women, and 44% men as their student body. The higher percentage of women in less elite schools pretty much requires the words of John Lovitz on "Saturday Night Live," ... "Ladies, lower your standards."
Naturally, competition for the most "Alpha" of men at most colleges is fierce. Conservative women commentators such as National Review's Mona Charen, or City Journal's Kay Hymowitz's finger men as a whole as the reason young women "act slutty" in their words, with more explicit behavior (compared to the past), clothing, and more. Young women clearly would prefer not to lower their standards, and the conduct condemned is not that of young women just mindlessly acting like robots to young men's demands as a group, but rather the need to capture the most Alpha of men in competition with many, many other women. It's a numbers game — the pool of Alpha men is smaller, and the pool of female competitors is larger. Hence the need to up the ante with more available sexual behavior, more revealing clothing, more consumption of alcohol and so on.
Exacerbated by the lack of any larger social context, of course. College years are conducted mostly in social isolation, with peers as the standards of conduct. Parties, and other socialization, do not take place among friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, and the like. That is a massive shift over time from the world of 1949.
But it's after College that the lack of "Dating Capital" does in the romantic success of the non dominant, non-Alpha male, in the case of the 19 year old from 1998.
The hardest problem is meeting young women. As reader K noted, young men and women in large organizations might well be suited for each other, but would never meet in socially appropriate ways to conducting romance. A young male computer programmer might never meet other than a casual pass in the hallways, a young female human resources officer. However, the young woman, assuming she is attractive on some baseline, will have no problems meeting young men in bars. Increasingly, women are opting for single motherhood and rejecting the messy compromises of marriage. One might even argue that a man would have to have a much larger premium over a woman's status and wealth and position in life in order to be considered for marriage. Given women's ability to form single mother families on their own.
Let's examine our hypothetical young man, who was 19 in 1998, after College. Let's assume he had little "game" but was lucky enough in College, fueled by lots of alcohol, "mistakes," and the imbalance in the sex ratio. Suddenly, in the big city after graduation, his partial success in College comes to a screeching stop, and he's back in High School again. His dating success and failures are entirely dependent on his ability to impress his female peers in bars, within a few seconds. If he has friends who are successful with women, and are inclined to teach him how to proceed successfully, he has hope. If not, he has none, and soon falls into substitution with pornography and video games and other entertainments.
Meanwhile, young women have a large cultural resource available to them, in how to become more attractive. Their dating capital, besides their friends, resides in magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Glamor, and the like. Movies, television shows, books, and daytime talk shows like Oprah are filled with make-overs designed to maximize attractiveness. Young men, on the other hand, have the "lad" magazines such as Maxim, with pictures of young women and not much advice on how to approach them. Their dating capital is essentially, their friends and the Pick Up Artist books, seminars, and websites. It's catch as catch can, with most young men likely to lose out. There is no systemic effort to clue them into the requirements of women. Part of the problem is that "excessive" interest in women, including much effort spent in picking them up, is considered "unmanly," in the way that Don Juans are considered, still, unseemly and effeminate. A common complaint among the Pick Up artists like "Mystery" is that their fathers and larger society did not teach them the skills they needed to attract women.
Which is precisely the point. In 1949, mediating institutions such as Churches and local organizations in towns and cities put young men and women together. "Game" was not needed because women's selection criteria included what their friends, family, and community would think and approve of their choices. Anonymous hookups were not very common, and young women already knew well of a man's character, relatives, and conduct before he ever approached her at a dance. The world of 1949, Greeley Colorado, did not have anonymous strangers meeting in a bar, based on purely physical attributes and "Game." Let's now examine our hypothetical 19 year old in 1949.
Assuming the young man matured early, again like his hypothetical counterpart in 1998, and had relatively high status, he would have had little problem with women in his life. It's quite likely that he would have married relatively early, compared to his counterpart in 1998, given the relative marriage rates derived from the US Census Bureau below:
[Click on Graph to Enlarge It]
But of course, it's not him we are interested in. Rather, it is the 19 year old in 1949, who probably would not have had great success in High School with girls, but after High School would have had a far different world in front of him.
That world, would include far greater "Dating Capital" because of social intermediary institutions. In Greeley, that would include the staid Baptist socials and dances that Sayyid Qutb found to be a hotbed of lust and depravity. Game was far less a determinant of success, because each young women knew well each potential suitor, besides his demeanor and appearance. While he might be smooth and suave, in his approach (or lacking), she would know who his parents were, how much money he was likely to make, if he had any major character flaws, what his brothers and sisters were like, in other words a fairly complete picture of the man and his relatives, not to mention his standing in the community and what most of her family and acquaintances thought of him. Any choice a young woman made would not be an anonymous, one-time hook-up, but taking place in front everyone. Including, her parents, possibly even grandparents. Young men who were of "good character" but lacked Game had lowered success, perhaps, compared to those who had better Game, but not decisively. They got married in far greater numbers than those of today.
Lack of anonymous, consequence-less choice, available contraception that was both cheap and reliable, and far more information to both men and women, made the young man of 1949, far different. Not only did he marry earlier, and in greater numbers, but there were not penalties for lacking College degrees as there is today in the dating market. Partly that was because of cheaper real estate, higher real incomes for blue collar men. But more because there were a host of institutions that served to bring young men and women together after they already had a good idea of who they were. Even in big cities, people lived in fairly intact, stable, ethnic neighborhoods. This was as true of New York as it was of Chicago, or Pittsburgh. Neighborhood dances, often sponsored by neighborhood churches, were the primary means of finding a mate.
It's only fairly recently, after all, that the Pick Up Artists have become a feature in Western life. In 1949 they would have seemed as out of place as a Rap video played before the staid burghers of Greeley. Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart were considered the models of masculinity. A man was supposed to be stalwart, loyal, true, and tough, not smooth, highly verbal, and attuned to women's moods. Today, we have "sensitive" screen stars such as Josh Hartnett, Shia LaBeouf, and Leonardo DiCaprio. That cultural shift seems to be part of the huge change in what women selected for, over time.
In the world of 1949, it seems that many other aspects of a man's character and personality mattered as much as Game, effectively neutralizing the Dating Capital advantage, or alternatively, spreading out Dating Capital by making other aspects besides smoothness, power/status, and confidence matter.
The world of 1949, however, is unlikely to ever return. Is there a systemic way to spread out Dating Capital to most young men? It doesn't seem possible, because no matter how well known "Game" becomes, there will always be a race to be the one with the "most" Game, as women simply choose the most Game-worthy candidate. Moreover, much of the spreading of game seems haphazard. Those with friends who have it, and are willing to share, and teach, benefit, those who do not, largely remain outside, clueless. It would seem almost impossible for women's choices to be informed by factors other than Game in a bar, given the largely rootless, anonymous urban culture most young people live within. The world of 1949, where even those who lacked "Game" (most men) had a good chance at romance and marriage, depended after all on stability, community, and social connections. All of that, is just gone.
After all, a man in 1949's Greeley Colorado would be astounded to learn that a bit more than fifty years later, men would pay $50 an hour just to have someone alongside them, giving them tips on how to pick up women. That's what the Church dances were for!
...Read more
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Modern Romance
Last year, Time Magazine both declared the modern love story dead, and asked who killed it. The story even cited two teen-age girls, all of 17 years, who had turned to Audrey Hepburn movies of the 1950's for their romantic movie fixes. Among the complaints is the audience reluctance to believe in happy endings, or even romance, amidst a society pushing endless consumerized sex and alternatives. Romance was explicitly compared to middle-management recruiting.
But read carefully the complaints of young men, lacking status and prestige and that indefinable "something" that women desire, and there will be a different story. Over at Roissy in DC, a blog devoted to male "Pick Up Artist" tales and dating advice (largely for men), both male and female commenters will acknowledge that a growing number of perfectly fine young men miss out on the dating scene, particularly in their twenties, because they lack any understanding of how their female contemporaries choose partners, and end up sidelined, frustrated, and angry. All around, an unhealthy situation, particularly long-term.
This situation occurs because modern romance is broken. It's broken in films, television, books, and in the real life that influences the culture and in turn is influence by culture. But to understand WHY modern romance is broken, we must first understand how romance functioned in the past, and how different Western romance is and was from almost every other culture.
It's useful to go back, all the way back, to 1949 and Greeley, Colorado. To examine the insight of one of History's most dangerous but obscure men, Sayyid Qutb, on the dynamics of Western romance.
Qutb, born to relative obscurity and poverty in Egypt, traveled to the United States on a scholarship to study at among other places, Colorado State College of Education, in Greeley Colorado. The man who's books, including "Social Justice," and "Milestones" are considered the founding intellectual works of Al Qaeda, did not enjoy his time in the United States. A lifelong bachelor, who lamented he could not find a Muslim woman of "sufficient" purity to be his wife, he found the overt sexual freedom and openness of American women profoundly threatening.
Executed in 1966 by Egypt's Nasser government for his role in a jihadist plot, Qutb throughout his writings found the United States and the open, Western society a monumental threat to Islamic society. His writings have been cited by both Osama bin Laden, and Ayman al-Zawahari, as justification for their jihadist campaigns. But it is his outsiders view of how American men and women conducted themselves that is most of interest to us now.
Qutb came from a tribal, polygamous, and rigid society. Marriages were not made out of love, by men and women freely assessing one another, and marrying out of their own free will. Rather, they were arranged affairs between families. Dowries, status of each family, the relative advantages and losses of each family, dominated those arrangements. Sexuality, and the open display of such, much less freedom of choice, profoundly threatened the ability of clan and tribe to perpetuate their closed system. It's to be expected that Qutb would not think much of Western society. But it's precisely because of that alien culture that his insights are useful.
At the time of his visit, in 1949, Greeley Colorado was a planned community. Situated in the plains North of Denver, the town outlawed alcohol and was populated mostly by conservative Baptists. The town was filled with temperate, prosperous, conservative, and family oriented people. But something in that town provoked profound hatred and contempt in Qutb. In his book, "The America I have Seen," he noted:
Well, yes. Even staid, conservative Baptists get married. And in the West, that means generally, Assortive Mating.
Assortive Mating is the West's secret weapon. It depends on open female choice, a relatively flat playing field for men, and some social constraints on both sexes choices. Assortive mating, reduced to it's simple form, means like marries like, based on romantic love, not family and tribal profit. Since each partner chooses freely. Assortive mating also allows for considerable female freedom, something that has characterized the West versus Islam, for example, from the beginning. Bernard Lewis, in "The Muslim Discovery of Europe," recounts how the Sultan's ambassadors to the Court of Vienna, were horrified at the Emperor himself stopping the street to allow ladies to pass, even doffing his hat in courtesy.
But just as important, Assortive Mating, based on mostly free and open choice, allows men, nearly all men, to form families based on love, and thus become heavily invested in them. It accounts for the relative advantage of the West over Islam, starting around 1000 AD, in mobilizing resources (even over a smaller population). The yeoman will fight harder, longer, to defend his family from a threat than his Muslim counterpart, lacking one in a polygamous society. The extraordinary flowering of technological advance, most of it done by ordinary, obscure men like Johannes Gutenberg, in post 1300 Europe, cannot be understood without including the extension of family formation in a monogamous, Assortive Mating society.
Westerners mate under a few, but critical rules. Yes, there is sex involved. Even or especially, a man like Qutb knew that from the start. Sexual attraction is the start, but not the finish, of Western Romance. But note the environment that Qutb criticizes: Church dances. Under the Western System, men and women are mostly free to choose their own partners. But institutions, such as local Church, or benevolent society, or group/block civic organization dances, fairs, exist to mediate that choice. Guide the choices, control them, and ensure optimal outcomes. Men cannot flit from woman to woman, because they will rapidly get a bad reputation, and face social censure and rejection by women themselves. Women cannot choose, and then choose again, either, because they also face social censure, in an open environment where the choice is made.
Critically, the mediating institutions allow "test drives" without sexual commitment. One can dance with many partners, committing nothing, and assessing each one's relative sexual desirability, sociability, charisma, personality, and more, without risk or censure. Everything occurs out in the open.
These are the simple rules: Mediating institutions for "safe" exploration of potential partners without risk or commitment, free choice by both parties, no promiscuity without social censure, and open choice seen by everyone. These rules form the bedrock of Western romance. They serve to form life-long partnerships based on love, and for the most part have worked for about a thousand years.
Yes there can be alcohol involved, to overcome social inhibitions, shyness, and particularly, fear of rejection by the pursuing men. There is almost always dancing and music, to allow the sexes to mingle, harmlessly, while still expressing sexual interest out in the open. Even or especially in temperance-driven Greeley, this was a big part of socializing. No wonder Qutb was horrified — a more direct threat to his tribal way of life could not be imagined! If everyone was free to choose, the whole thing would fall apart, including or especially his beloved Islam.
Notice the key requirement for the choice to be out in the open, seen by everyone, and the penalties for promiscuous behavior by both sexes. Both require a fairly stable, intimate group setting where anonymous behavior is difficult. Yes, it is possible for a few very discreet individuals to carry on affairs and promiscuous behaviors, and the penalties fall heavier on women than on men (an unfairness decried by feminists). However, for the most part this system has not only served the West well, but formed the foundation of the nuclear family by insuring free and fair choices for the most part for men and women alike. Without a few men dominating the mating opportunities.
Now, we see things very different. Today's society is filled with books, television shows (VH1's "The Pick Up Artist") and seminars (costing thousands of dollars) designed to teach men how to compete with those naturally gifted at picking up women and develop "game." Romance has turned into big business, according to the Washington Post. A "wingman" to help men practice "pick up lines" on strangers can cost $50 an hour, and more than 120,000 marriages a year come from online dating matches. The article cites frayed social ties and increased isolation, matched by hyper-connectivity on the Internet.
Whereas before, men and women performed their mating assessments in full view of family, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances, each happy to add to information about the other's intended choice and suitability (or lack of) regarding that choice, today's romantic life is radically different.
The Pill was widely available to married women in 1965, in "Griswold v. Connecticut" (which accounts for the strange demographic drop in fertility seen in my post Why Is It Always 1968 Part 1), and later all women in in 1972 in "Eisenstadt v. Baird." The Pill plus the condom, providing cheap, effective, and reliable contraception, helped radically alter how men and women engaged in romance.
Along with greatly enhanced personal mobility, with young men and women flocking to urban centers, that offer highly anonymous, consequence free, sexual entanglements, the nature of choice changed radically. No longer were constraints of what one's neighbors, friends, parents, fellow church goers, younger siblings, and the like would think of behavior and choices relevant. Instead, there was an endless consumerist choice available, and always something better along the horizon. If a relationship did not work out, there was always another one waiting to come along.
Indeed, increasing numbers of women are now moving to a point where marriage is no longer a goal. The Guardian reports that growing numbers of financially independent young women prefer single motherhood. "I Wanted a Child more than a Man." Indeed, in the Telegraph UK story, half of women surveyed would consider having a baby with a friend if they did not find a partner at a certain age.
As Roissy has pointed out, urban living, with the anonymous curtain over choices and behavior, is bad for long-term relationships. It tips the balance among both men and women for short term selection, based on raw sexual appeal, and this balance is unhealthy.
Reading Roissy and other blogs, young men who do not have the height, physique, social dominance, power and status, to win in the bar scene mostly end up alone. Substituting with pornography and video games. Socially isolated and removed from women. When, in their mid thirties or so, women age out of the "Alpha Male" selection at bars and other pickup places, their experiences with these men are not happy. The men lack social skills desired, along with status, prestige, and power that the earlier partners of the women in question possessed. Moreover, each date knows that they are not exactly each other's first choice but more like last choice. With angry isolation on the one hand and quite likely, a large number of partners on the other hand. Many of the men exhibit "angry" behaviors, and this is borne out on comments in various forums where young men complain that they followed society's "rules" akin to that of Greeley, in 1949, and achieved nothing.
This is why there is no happily ever after in Hollywood's romance movies, and even television shows such as "Gilmore Girls" have downbeat endings where 40 something women always choose the ever-present bad-boy over the small-town good guy. In the present bar-driven, urban hook-up culture, there is no happy ending for most people. It's why no one believes in Happy Ever After, and why the few movies that do present such an ending tend to be ... directed at men. Such as "Knocked Up" or "Wedding Crashers."
The cultural and social implications of this shift in romance is profound. A few, naturally gifted young men will dominate the urban bar hook-up scene. Relationships are short-lived and disposable. More and more women will choose single motherhood (the latest US Census report had 41% of births in 2006 to single mothers). Young men will grow up without fathers, and fall into either "nice guy" behaviors that prevent them from having any relationships, or more likely, become as bad-boy as they can to compete for women in the urban, anonymous choice driven market. Young women without fathers will compete even more fiercely for the few "desirable" men who exhibit the baddest of bad boy behaviors. And very rapidly, the middle class behaviors we take for granted will become extinct.
In 1965, it was possible to listen to Black radio, and hear earnest, heartfelt songs of romantic yearning and love, by young Black men, about young Black women. Artists such as Marvin Gaye expressed sentiments that any Medieval troubador singing about his beloved, or the most romantic of Tin Pan Alley songwriters, would have recognized immediately. Today, Rap music compares young Black women to pieces of meat. In the 1950's, writer Theodore Dalrymple noted that it was common for even the poorest places in London to leave their doors unlocked. Now, the descendants of those people, mostly White, exhibit the most thug-like behavior, imprisoning the older inhabitants in their own homes. All this in a space of about forty years.
Middle class behavior is dependent on socializing the next generations into middle class norms. It does not just "happen" by magic, or become a blooming flower amongst urban centers. If that were the case Lagos, Nigeria, or Mexico City would be awash with middle class masses. Most important among the factors that create new generations of middle class people is the nature of romantic choice. A society of mostly single, unattached, men playing video games or viewing porn, while a few "game" many women into bed, and mostly single mothers, will not create a middle class society. Never in history has such a group done so, on the contrary it creates a brutal, all-against-all society familiar to any who have visited England's Council Estates or Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing projects.
Many commentators have blamed the ongoing Western social collapse on various factors. Socialism, the Welfare state, media degeneracy, feminism, the "Long March" of Gramscian followers through various institutions. Far more likely, is the radical shift in romantic choices, brought about by the Pill, the Condom, rising female wealth, and urban anonymity.
Which is why Modern Romance ... is dead.
...Read more
But read carefully the complaints of young men, lacking status and prestige and that indefinable "something" that women desire, and there will be a different story. Over at Roissy in DC, a blog devoted to male "Pick Up Artist" tales and dating advice (largely for men), both male and female commenters will acknowledge that a growing number of perfectly fine young men miss out on the dating scene, particularly in their twenties, because they lack any understanding of how their female contemporaries choose partners, and end up sidelined, frustrated, and angry. All around, an unhealthy situation, particularly long-term.
This situation occurs because modern romance is broken. It's broken in films, television, books, and in the real life that influences the culture and in turn is influence by culture. But to understand WHY modern romance is broken, we must first understand how romance functioned in the past, and how different Western romance is and was from almost every other culture.
It's useful to go back, all the way back, to 1949 and Greeley, Colorado. To examine the insight of one of History's most dangerous but obscure men, Sayyid Qutb, on the dynamics of Western romance.
Qutb, born to relative obscurity and poverty in Egypt, traveled to the United States on a scholarship to study at among other places, Colorado State College of Education, in Greeley Colorado. The man who's books, including "Social Justice," and "Milestones" are considered the founding intellectual works of Al Qaeda, did not enjoy his time in the United States. A lifelong bachelor, who lamented he could not find a Muslim woman of "sufficient" purity to be his wife, he found the overt sexual freedom and openness of American women profoundly threatening.
Executed in 1966 by Egypt's Nasser government for his role in a jihadist plot, Qutb throughout his writings found the United States and the open, Western society a monumental threat to Islamic society. His writings have been cited by both Osama bin Laden, and Ayman al-Zawahari, as justification for their jihadist campaigns. But it is his outsiders view of how American men and women conducted themselves that is most of interest to us now.
Qutb came from a tribal, polygamous, and rigid society. Marriages were not made out of love, by men and women freely assessing one another, and marrying out of their own free will. Rather, they were arranged affairs between families. Dowries, status of each family, the relative advantages and losses of each family, dominated those arrangements. Sexuality, and the open display of such, much less freedom of choice, profoundly threatened the ability of clan and tribe to perpetuate their closed system. It's to be expected that Qutb would not think much of Western society. But it's precisely because of that alien culture that his insights are useful.
At the time of his visit, in 1949, Greeley Colorado was a planned community. Situated in the plains North of Denver, the town outlawed alcohol and was populated mostly by conservative Baptists. The town was filled with temperate, prosperous, conservative, and family oriented people. But something in that town provoked profound hatred and contempt in Qutb. In his book, "The America I have Seen," he noted:
The American girl is well acquainted with her body's seductive capacity. She knows it lies in the face, and in expressive eyes, and thirsty lips. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs — and she shows all this and does not hide it.
Jazz is his [note: the American male's] preferred music, and it is created by Negroes to satisfy their love of noise and to whet their sexual desires ...
They danced to the tunes of the gramophone, and the dance floor was replete with tapping feet, enticing legs, arms wrapped around waists, lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests. The atmosphere was full of desire...
Well, yes. Even staid, conservative Baptists get married. And in the West, that means generally, Assortive Mating.
Assortive Mating is the West's secret weapon. It depends on open female choice, a relatively flat playing field for men, and some social constraints on both sexes choices. Assortive mating, reduced to it's simple form, means like marries like, based on romantic love, not family and tribal profit. Since each partner chooses freely. Assortive mating also allows for considerable female freedom, something that has characterized the West versus Islam, for example, from the beginning. Bernard Lewis, in "The Muslim Discovery of Europe," recounts how the Sultan's ambassadors to the Court of Vienna, were horrified at the Emperor himself stopping the street to allow ladies to pass, even doffing his hat in courtesy.
But just as important, Assortive Mating, based on mostly free and open choice, allows men, nearly all men, to form families based on love, and thus become heavily invested in them. It accounts for the relative advantage of the West over Islam, starting around 1000 AD, in mobilizing resources (even over a smaller population). The yeoman will fight harder, longer, to defend his family from a threat than his Muslim counterpart, lacking one in a polygamous society. The extraordinary flowering of technological advance, most of it done by ordinary, obscure men like Johannes Gutenberg, in post 1300 Europe, cannot be understood without including the extension of family formation in a monogamous, Assortive Mating society.
Westerners mate under a few, but critical rules. Yes, there is sex involved. Even or especially, a man like Qutb knew that from the start. Sexual attraction is the start, but not the finish, of Western Romance. But note the environment that Qutb criticizes: Church dances. Under the Western System, men and women are mostly free to choose their own partners. But institutions, such as local Church, or benevolent society, or group/block civic organization dances, fairs, exist to mediate that choice. Guide the choices, control them, and ensure optimal outcomes. Men cannot flit from woman to woman, because they will rapidly get a bad reputation, and face social censure and rejection by women themselves. Women cannot choose, and then choose again, either, because they also face social censure, in an open environment where the choice is made.
Critically, the mediating institutions allow "test drives" without sexual commitment. One can dance with many partners, committing nothing, and assessing each one's relative sexual desirability, sociability, charisma, personality, and more, without risk or censure. Everything occurs out in the open.
These are the simple rules: Mediating institutions for "safe" exploration of potential partners without risk or commitment, free choice by both parties, no promiscuity without social censure, and open choice seen by everyone. These rules form the bedrock of Western romance. They serve to form life-long partnerships based on love, and for the most part have worked for about a thousand years.
Yes there can be alcohol involved, to overcome social inhibitions, shyness, and particularly, fear of rejection by the pursuing men. There is almost always dancing and music, to allow the sexes to mingle, harmlessly, while still expressing sexual interest out in the open. Even or especially in temperance-driven Greeley, this was a big part of socializing. No wonder Qutb was horrified — a more direct threat to his tribal way of life could not be imagined! If everyone was free to choose, the whole thing would fall apart, including or especially his beloved Islam.
Notice the key requirement for the choice to be out in the open, seen by everyone, and the penalties for promiscuous behavior by both sexes. Both require a fairly stable, intimate group setting where anonymous behavior is difficult. Yes, it is possible for a few very discreet individuals to carry on affairs and promiscuous behaviors, and the penalties fall heavier on women than on men (an unfairness decried by feminists). However, for the most part this system has not only served the West well, but formed the foundation of the nuclear family by insuring free and fair choices for the most part for men and women alike. Without a few men dominating the mating opportunities.
Now, we see things very different. Today's society is filled with books, television shows (VH1's "The Pick Up Artist") and seminars (costing thousands of dollars) designed to teach men how to compete with those naturally gifted at picking up women and develop "game." Romance has turned into big business, according to the Washington Post. A "wingman" to help men practice "pick up lines" on strangers can cost $50 an hour, and more than 120,000 marriages a year come from online dating matches. The article cites frayed social ties and increased isolation, matched by hyper-connectivity on the Internet.
Whereas before, men and women performed their mating assessments in full view of family, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances, each happy to add to information about the other's intended choice and suitability (or lack of) regarding that choice, today's romantic life is radically different.
The Pill was widely available to married women in 1965, in "Griswold v. Connecticut" (which accounts for the strange demographic drop in fertility seen in my post Why Is It Always 1968 Part 1), and later all women in in 1972 in "Eisenstadt v. Baird." The Pill plus the condom, providing cheap, effective, and reliable contraception, helped radically alter how men and women engaged in romance.
Along with greatly enhanced personal mobility, with young men and women flocking to urban centers, that offer highly anonymous, consequence free, sexual entanglements, the nature of choice changed radically. No longer were constraints of what one's neighbors, friends, parents, fellow church goers, younger siblings, and the like would think of behavior and choices relevant. Instead, there was an endless consumerist choice available, and always something better along the horizon. If a relationship did not work out, there was always another one waiting to come along.
Indeed, increasing numbers of women are now moving to a point where marriage is no longer a goal. The Guardian reports that growing numbers of financially independent young women prefer single motherhood. "I Wanted a Child more than a Man." Indeed, in the Telegraph UK story, half of women surveyed would consider having a baby with a friend if they did not find a partner at a certain age.
As Roissy has pointed out, urban living, with the anonymous curtain over choices and behavior, is bad for long-term relationships. It tips the balance among both men and women for short term selection, based on raw sexual appeal, and this balance is unhealthy.
Reading Roissy and other blogs, young men who do not have the height, physique, social dominance, power and status, to win in the bar scene mostly end up alone. Substituting with pornography and video games. Socially isolated and removed from women. When, in their mid thirties or so, women age out of the "Alpha Male" selection at bars and other pickup places, their experiences with these men are not happy. The men lack social skills desired, along with status, prestige, and power that the earlier partners of the women in question possessed. Moreover, each date knows that they are not exactly each other's first choice but more like last choice. With angry isolation on the one hand and quite likely, a large number of partners on the other hand. Many of the men exhibit "angry" behaviors, and this is borne out on comments in various forums where young men complain that they followed society's "rules" akin to that of Greeley, in 1949, and achieved nothing.
This is why there is no happily ever after in Hollywood's romance movies, and even television shows such as "Gilmore Girls" have downbeat endings where 40 something women always choose the ever-present bad-boy over the small-town good guy. In the present bar-driven, urban hook-up culture, there is no happy ending for most people. It's why no one believes in Happy Ever After, and why the few movies that do present such an ending tend to be ... directed at men. Such as "Knocked Up" or "Wedding Crashers."
The cultural and social implications of this shift in romance is profound. A few, naturally gifted young men will dominate the urban bar hook-up scene. Relationships are short-lived and disposable. More and more women will choose single motherhood (the latest US Census report had 41% of births in 2006 to single mothers). Young men will grow up without fathers, and fall into either "nice guy" behaviors that prevent them from having any relationships, or more likely, become as bad-boy as they can to compete for women in the urban, anonymous choice driven market. Young women without fathers will compete even more fiercely for the few "desirable" men who exhibit the baddest of bad boy behaviors. And very rapidly, the middle class behaviors we take for granted will become extinct.
In 1965, it was possible to listen to Black radio, and hear earnest, heartfelt songs of romantic yearning and love, by young Black men, about young Black women. Artists such as Marvin Gaye expressed sentiments that any Medieval troubador singing about his beloved, or the most romantic of Tin Pan Alley songwriters, would have recognized immediately. Today, Rap music compares young Black women to pieces of meat. In the 1950's, writer Theodore Dalrymple noted that it was common for even the poorest places in London to leave their doors unlocked. Now, the descendants of those people, mostly White, exhibit the most thug-like behavior, imprisoning the older inhabitants in their own homes. All this in a space of about forty years.
Middle class behavior is dependent on socializing the next generations into middle class norms. It does not just "happen" by magic, or become a blooming flower amongst urban centers. If that were the case Lagos, Nigeria, or Mexico City would be awash with middle class masses. Most important among the factors that create new generations of middle class people is the nature of romantic choice. A society of mostly single, unattached, men playing video games or viewing porn, while a few "game" many women into bed, and mostly single mothers, will not create a middle class society. Never in history has such a group done so, on the contrary it creates a brutal, all-against-all society familiar to any who have visited England's Council Estates or Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing projects.
Many commentators have blamed the ongoing Western social collapse on various factors. Socialism, the Welfare state, media degeneracy, feminism, the "Long March" of Gramscian followers through various institutions. Far more likely, is the radical shift in romantic choices, brought about by the Pill, the Condom, rising female wealth, and urban anonymity.
Which is why Modern Romance ... is dead.
...Read more
Monday, September 22, 2008
Why the Culture War Has Re-ignited
The selection of Sarah Palin as McCain's VP choice has re-ignited the Culture Wars. During the Emmy awards, Tina Fey opined she wanted Sarah Palin to be removed from public life. Laura Linney, Howie Mandel, Jeremy Piven, Stephen Colbert, and John Stewart all expressed their negative views of Sarah Palin. John McCain? He wasn't even mentioned. Even Saturday Night Live got into the act, with a skit suggesting that Todd Palin was molesting his daughters.
The Culture Wars, last seen in the 1992 election, are back. Sarah Palin is at the center. Instead of Murphy Brown. This time, of course, for her decision to have five children, with a blue collar, supportive man. But what drives the reason the Culture Wars are being fought? After all, much of this abuse directed at Palin is spontaneous, coming from people such as Sandra Bernhard. Who, to the acclaim of the Washington Post, declared that Sarah Palin would be "gang raped" by "some of Sandra's big, Black brothers" should Palin dare to venture into Manhattan.
What is driving this abuse? It's fear of demographics, and the need to control culture to make up for the demographic collapse of White Liberalism.
Simply put, White Liberals are not having many children. Philip Longman, in his "Return of the Patriarchy," notes that "Red" states that voted for George W. Bush in 2004, had a 12% fertility advantage over "Blue" states that voted for John Kerry. Liberals do know this, and it accounts for the fury over which they wage the Culture Wars, and also their support for illegal and legal immigration.
The story of Forty-Three year old Alexis Stewart, daughter of Martha Stewart, is fairly instructive. The forces of both urban anonymity, and Liberal Culture, encourage educated, urban, high income women to delay childbirth until radical (and risky, for both mother and child) means of fertility, which in the case of Stewart cost $28,000 a month, are required. Meanwhile, as Longman notes, Mormon and Evangelical Christians have many children.Mitt Romney has for example, five sons. Liberals know well that they will simply be outnumbered and shoved aside from power by sheer fertility (and their own lack of it) unless something is done.
Hence, the Culture Wars. Culture is the Liberal "Secret Weapon" for controlling political, social, and yes demographic power. Liberals bank on the power of Culture to transform, young men and women, from socially conservative, Evangelical, Mormon, and other "patriarchal" groups into well, Liberals. To a certain extent they have been successful. Young women in particular flock to urban centers, as Strange Maps points out. While commenters on Strange Maps have pointed out some possible errors in the map's assumptions, the main point that young women and men flock to urban areas is not disputed. As "Pick Up Artist" and blogger Roissy has noted, urban living imposes it's own dynamics. Including anonymity, endless choice, and a consumerist approach to relationships. The dynamic has not escaped the notice of Liberals, who bet on the dynamic and the omnipresent Media Culture to create their own Janissary Corps.
The Turkish Sultans, engaged first in the conquest of Anatolia, which at the time was overwhelmingly Christian, had a problem. A problem made worse by the final conquest of Byzantium in 1453, and the conquest of Christian nations in the Balkans, Southern Russia, and Southern Poland. Namely, revolt by Christians who outnumbered the Muslims, at least locally. The solution to this problem was the formation of the Janissary Corps, by the Sultan Murad I, around 1365. Local Christian youths were conscripted, forcibly converted as Muslims, and trained as elite soldiers who formed the Sultan's own personal army, as opposed to the tribal levies who were loyal to their own tribal leaders. The Janissaries were paid, regularly, as soldiers, and wore distinctive uniforms. Their loyalty was to the Sultan, not other leaders or groups. Their military prowess, and the ability of the Sultans to use them as an ever-expanding personal army, accounted for much of the Ottoman success, even as late as 1683 and the Second Siege of Vienna. Eventually, of course, the Janissaries became a rather debased Praetorian Guard, controlling the Sultans rather than acting as agents of his will. But for the better part of five hundred years the institution was successful.
Now, Liberals do not intend to impress and forcibly convert socially conservative young people. Rather, they believe that the Media Culture, and the signaling of what is fashionable and trendy, will work the same way in the anonymous, consumerist, status-driven urban culture that young men and women largely inhabit today. After all, they reason, the young men and women who leave small towns and suburbs, enter into large urban areas that are beyond daily contact with their parents, former friends, and social networks. Making these young men and women extremely malleable for new social norms, based on approval of taste-makers and fashions that determine relationship success, in a place where anonymity and endless choice abounds. Having the "correct" opinions are vital for relationship success. Reinforced of course by the Media and Culture which tells young people what attitudes are attributes of those successful in relationships and status and power in the urban mosh pit, and what attitudes are the mark of failures.
This is why the Culture Wars were fought in the first place, starting in the mid to late 1980's when the Baby Boomer generation early cohorts first reached their late thirties and early forties, and positions of cultural power. It's why Murphy Brown had a child on her own, with a father irrelevant. It's why nearly every television show, movie, and pop music artist all push the same social conventions of social liberalism. It is the weapon against fertility — the ability to "capture" young social conservative men and women and "convert" them to social Liberalism, when they move to large Urban Areas, outside the reach of their childhood churches, parents, and friends, and the social networks that shaped their views.
Sarah Palin, of course, just by example, threatens that ability to push a social consensus. Just by existing as an example of a woman who did not move to a large urban area, and pursue the kind of life that say, Alexis Stewart did, she is a threat, from outside Culture. Outside movies, television, and popular music, what Liberals see as the great social shapers of attitudes in the modern world. No less than George Clooney, after all, claimed it was Hollywood that helped end racism and sexism, through it's movies. If Sarah Palin has a successful political career, particularly if she assumes the Presidency at some point (a future viewed as pure horror by Margaret Cho and Tina Fey), she represents an "end run" around the Liberal Culture. A threat to the ability of Liberals to use Culture as a Janissary Corps to indoctrinate young men and women into their own worldview.
This threat is seen most clearly by those who use their Cultural monopoly, in movies, television, and popular music to enforce cultural mores. Hence the spontaneous and rage-filled venom spewed by movie, television, and pop music celebrities. Including Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and now, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford who dubbed Barack Obama "a Lightworker", presumably after watching one too many episodes of "Charmed" which also featured "White Lighters" with magical powers.
Even the Media people like Morford absorb without question the culture produced by television:
It is also why people like Morford hate that Palin could threaten this cultural monopoly by her success:
This cultural monopoly in the English speaking media, is also why Liberals support illegal immigration, and increased legal immigration as well. They assume that the mostly Mexican immigrants, legal or not, will be absorbed into the cultural assumptions of the Urban professional class: PETA, Greenpeace, "Lightworkers" and other New Age nonsense, and of course Global Warming and the Gaia religion. Along with the endless pursuit of status and consumerist relationships. Mostly, the White young men and women who make the journey from the hinterland into the Big Cities have been absorbed into that Cultural monopoly.
What the Liberal Elite don't understand, of course, is that particularly for Mexican Immigrants, legal or not, this absorption simply does not take place. Like Sarah Palin, they stand aside. Not by living in small-town Alaska, but by living outside the English speaking Media. Just in the last few years, Nielsen has listed Univision, in addition to ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and the CW, in broadcast networks. As can be readily discovered by the casual observer, Nielsen shows that Hispanics don't watch the same things Whites or Blacks do. During the Summer Olympics, both Whites and Blacks mostly watched the Olympics on NBC. For Hispanics, it was shows like "Sabado Gigante." The Olympics did not make the top ten for that demographic.
Hispanics in the US (and we are largely speaking of Mexican Immigrants, legal or illegal, and their children) have not one but two broadcast television networks offering Spanish-language content, Univision and Telemundo. Anyone watching their shows, will find radically different ideas about the place and role of women in society, treatment of animals, romance and relationships, concerns about the environment, and much else. Though Hispanics vote reliably Democratic, they hold vastly different attitudes towards, say gays and gay marriage, than the Liberal Culture of the English speaking elite. They remain, decades after large scale immigration into the US, legal or otherwise, largely distinct and separate culturally from their English speaking contemporaries. This is true even of English speaking children of Mexican immigrants. Who remain loyal to Spanish language media, culture, and mores. Even if they are outside daily contact with their parents, churches,and social network. The vast ocean of English speaking Liberal Culture holds little attraction to them, and they remain immune to it's function of absorbing and acculturating newcomers to the large urban centers of America.
Large Urban centers such as New York or Los Angeles can have two separate, distinct, and largely exclusive populations, the White Yuppie professional class, and the largely Hispanic working class, that rarely if ever interact. While the effect of Liberal Culture in English language outlets is powerful, it has no effect whatsoever on those who live side by side with it, but separate to it. This outcome of course, is something that Liberals cannot see, just as fish in the middle of the ocean cannot fathom where the shore begins and the sea ends.
This blindness, and the battle for supremacy over the fertility of socially conservative Whites through the "Janissary Effect" of Liberal Culture is what drives the fury over Palin by those who drive that culture. They see their power slipping away from them, by the existence of an alternate model. Ironically, they fail to see (as do European elites who vastly overestimate the power of assimilation by culture with their own, separate Muslim population) that the real threat comes not by the example of Palin but the numerical supremacy of the Immigrant population they have welcomed as allies against more fertile and conservative Whites.
A Mexican origin majority voter State (California is majority Mexican, but not in registered voters who are still overwhelmingly White), would outlaw gay marriage, and likely benefits for "registered partners." Since gay rights and gays remain deeply unpopular among Mexican nationals and those of Mexican origin. Dog fighting and cock fighting would be legal, since those are popular past-times for Mexican nationals and Mexican origin citizens. As the effect of English-language Culture in remaking socially conservative White men and women in large urban centers into largely child-less yuppies becomes stronger, ironically the more fertile Mexican origin citizens will wield far greater voting power, and remake society to their liking.
Largely undoing many of the key aspects of the White Liberal Society.
No one said that the Cultural gate keepers of English language media were smart. Merely powerful.
...Read more
The Culture Wars, last seen in the 1992 election, are back. Sarah Palin is at the center. Instead of Murphy Brown. This time, of course, for her decision to have five children, with a blue collar, supportive man. But what drives the reason the Culture Wars are being fought? After all, much of this abuse directed at Palin is spontaneous, coming from people such as Sandra Bernhard. Who, to the acclaim of the Washington Post, declared that Sarah Palin would be "gang raped" by "some of Sandra's big, Black brothers" should Palin dare to venture into Manhattan.
What is driving this abuse? It's fear of demographics, and the need to control culture to make up for the demographic collapse of White Liberalism.
Simply put, White Liberals are not having many children. Philip Longman, in his "Return of the Patriarchy," notes that "Red" states that voted for George W. Bush in 2004, had a 12% fertility advantage over "Blue" states that voted for John Kerry. Liberals do know this, and it accounts for the fury over which they wage the Culture Wars, and also their support for illegal and legal immigration.
The story of Forty-Three year old Alexis Stewart, daughter of Martha Stewart, is fairly instructive. The forces of both urban anonymity, and Liberal Culture, encourage educated, urban, high income women to delay childbirth until radical (and risky, for both mother and child) means of fertility, which in the case of Stewart cost $28,000 a month, are required. Meanwhile, as Longman notes, Mormon and Evangelical Christians have many children.Mitt Romney has for example, five sons. Liberals know well that they will simply be outnumbered and shoved aside from power by sheer fertility (and their own lack of it) unless something is done.
Hence, the Culture Wars. Culture is the Liberal "Secret Weapon" for controlling political, social, and yes demographic power. Liberals bank on the power of Culture to transform, young men and women, from socially conservative, Evangelical, Mormon, and other "patriarchal" groups into well, Liberals. To a certain extent they have been successful. Young women in particular flock to urban centers, as Strange Maps points out. While commenters on Strange Maps have pointed out some possible errors in the map's assumptions, the main point that young women and men flock to urban areas is not disputed. As "Pick Up Artist" and blogger Roissy has noted, urban living imposes it's own dynamics. Including anonymity, endless choice, and a consumerist approach to relationships. The dynamic has not escaped the notice of Liberals, who bet on the dynamic and the omnipresent Media Culture to create their own Janissary Corps.
The Turkish Sultans, engaged first in the conquest of Anatolia, which at the time was overwhelmingly Christian, had a problem. A problem made worse by the final conquest of Byzantium in 1453, and the conquest of Christian nations in the Balkans, Southern Russia, and Southern Poland. Namely, revolt by Christians who outnumbered the Muslims, at least locally. The solution to this problem was the formation of the Janissary Corps, by the Sultan Murad I, around 1365. Local Christian youths were conscripted, forcibly converted as Muslims, and trained as elite soldiers who formed the Sultan's own personal army, as opposed to the tribal levies who were loyal to their own tribal leaders. The Janissaries were paid, regularly, as soldiers, and wore distinctive uniforms. Their loyalty was to the Sultan, not other leaders or groups. Their military prowess, and the ability of the Sultans to use them as an ever-expanding personal army, accounted for much of the Ottoman success, even as late as 1683 and the Second Siege of Vienna. Eventually, of course, the Janissaries became a rather debased Praetorian Guard, controlling the Sultans rather than acting as agents of his will. But for the better part of five hundred years the institution was successful.
Now, Liberals do not intend to impress and forcibly convert socially conservative young people. Rather, they believe that the Media Culture, and the signaling of what is fashionable and trendy, will work the same way in the anonymous, consumerist, status-driven urban culture that young men and women largely inhabit today. After all, they reason, the young men and women who leave small towns and suburbs, enter into large urban areas that are beyond daily contact with their parents, former friends, and social networks. Making these young men and women extremely malleable for new social norms, based on approval of taste-makers and fashions that determine relationship success, in a place where anonymity and endless choice abounds. Having the "correct" opinions are vital for relationship success. Reinforced of course by the Media and Culture which tells young people what attitudes are attributes of those successful in relationships and status and power in the urban mosh pit, and what attitudes are the mark of failures.
This is why the Culture Wars were fought in the first place, starting in the mid to late 1980's when the Baby Boomer generation early cohorts first reached their late thirties and early forties, and positions of cultural power. It's why Murphy Brown had a child on her own, with a father irrelevant. It's why nearly every television show, movie, and pop music artist all push the same social conventions of social liberalism. It is the weapon against fertility — the ability to "capture" young social conservative men and women and "convert" them to social Liberalism, when they move to large Urban Areas, outside the reach of their childhood churches, parents, and friends, and the social networks that shaped their views.
Sarah Palin, of course, just by example, threatens that ability to push a social consensus. Just by existing as an example of a woman who did not move to a large urban area, and pursue the kind of life that say, Alexis Stewart did, she is a threat, from outside Culture. Outside movies, television, and popular music, what Liberals see as the great social shapers of attitudes in the modern world. No less than George Clooney, after all, claimed it was Hollywood that helped end racism and sexism, through it's movies. If Sarah Palin has a successful political career, particularly if she assumes the Presidency at some point (a future viewed as pure horror by Margaret Cho and Tina Fey), she represents an "end run" around the Liberal Culture. A threat to the ability of Liberals to use Culture as a Janissary Corps to indoctrinate young men and women into their own worldview.
This threat is seen most clearly by those who use their Cultural monopoly, in movies, television, and popular music to enforce cultural mores. Hence the spontaneous and rage-filled venom spewed by movie, television, and pop music celebrities. Including Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and now, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford who dubbed Barack Obama "a Lightworker", presumably after watching one too many episodes of "Charmed" which also featured "White Lighters" with magical powers.
Even the Media people like Morford absorb without question the culture produced by television:
Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.
It is also why people like Morford hate that Palin could threaten this cultural monopoly by her success:
Every white woman I know is positively horrified.
Wait, that's not exactly true. It's more accurate to say that every thoughtful or liberal or intuitive or open-minded white woman I know worth her vagina monologue and her self-determination and two centuries of nonstop striving for equal rights and sexual freedom and exhaustive patriarchal unshackling is right now openly horrified, appalled at what the addition of shrill PTA hockey-mom Sarah Palin seems to have done for the soggy, comatose McCain campaign -- that is, make it not merely remotely interesting and melodramatic, but aggressively hostile to, well, to all intelligent women everywhere.
Truly, among women in the know and especially among those who fought so hard to bring Hillary Clinton to the brink of history, nausea and a general recoiling appear to be the universal reactions to Palin's sudden presence on the national stage, stemming straight from the idea that there's even a slight chance in hell such an antagonistic, anti-female politico could be within a 72-year-old heartbeat of becoming the most powerful and iconic woman of all time.
They say: You've got to be kidding me. They say: This is what we get? This could be our historic role model? Two hundred years (OK, more like 2000) of struggle, only to have this nasty caricature of femininity try to hijack and mock and undermine it all?
It cannot be true, they say. The universe must be joking, would not dare dump such a homophobic, Creationist evangelical nutball on us, this anti-choice, God-pandering woman who's the inverse of Hillary, this woman of deep inexperience who abhors birth control and supports abstinence education and shoots exhausted wolves from helicopters and hates polar bears and actually stands for everything progressive women have resented since the first pope Swift-Boated Eve.
This cultural monopoly in the English speaking media, is also why Liberals support illegal immigration, and increased legal immigration as well. They assume that the mostly Mexican immigrants, legal or not, will be absorbed into the cultural assumptions of the Urban professional class: PETA, Greenpeace, "Lightworkers" and other New Age nonsense, and of course Global Warming and the Gaia religion. Along with the endless pursuit of status and consumerist relationships. Mostly, the White young men and women who make the journey from the hinterland into the Big Cities have been absorbed into that Cultural monopoly.
What the Liberal Elite don't understand, of course, is that particularly for Mexican Immigrants, legal or not, this absorption simply does not take place. Like Sarah Palin, they stand aside. Not by living in small-town Alaska, but by living outside the English speaking Media. Just in the last few years, Nielsen has listed Univision, in addition to ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and the CW, in broadcast networks. As can be readily discovered by the casual observer, Nielsen shows that Hispanics don't watch the same things Whites or Blacks do. During the Summer Olympics, both Whites and Blacks mostly watched the Olympics on NBC. For Hispanics, it was shows like "Sabado Gigante." The Olympics did not make the top ten for that demographic.
Hispanics in the US (and we are largely speaking of Mexican Immigrants, legal or illegal, and their children) have not one but two broadcast television networks offering Spanish-language content, Univision and Telemundo. Anyone watching their shows, will find radically different ideas about the place and role of women in society, treatment of animals, romance and relationships, concerns about the environment, and much else. Though Hispanics vote reliably Democratic, they hold vastly different attitudes towards, say gays and gay marriage, than the Liberal Culture of the English speaking elite. They remain, decades after large scale immigration into the US, legal or otherwise, largely distinct and separate culturally from their English speaking contemporaries. This is true even of English speaking children of Mexican immigrants. Who remain loyal to Spanish language media, culture, and mores. Even if they are outside daily contact with their parents, churches,and social network. The vast ocean of English speaking Liberal Culture holds little attraction to them, and they remain immune to it's function of absorbing and acculturating newcomers to the large urban centers of America.
Large Urban centers such as New York or Los Angeles can have two separate, distinct, and largely exclusive populations, the White Yuppie professional class, and the largely Hispanic working class, that rarely if ever interact. While the effect of Liberal Culture in English language outlets is powerful, it has no effect whatsoever on those who live side by side with it, but separate to it. This outcome of course, is something that Liberals cannot see, just as fish in the middle of the ocean cannot fathom where the shore begins and the sea ends.
This blindness, and the battle for supremacy over the fertility of socially conservative Whites through the "Janissary Effect" of Liberal Culture is what drives the fury over Palin by those who drive that culture. They see their power slipping away from them, by the existence of an alternate model. Ironically, they fail to see (as do European elites who vastly overestimate the power of assimilation by culture with their own, separate Muslim population) that the real threat comes not by the example of Palin but the numerical supremacy of the Immigrant population they have welcomed as allies against more fertile and conservative Whites.
A Mexican origin majority voter State (California is majority Mexican, but not in registered voters who are still overwhelmingly White), would outlaw gay marriage, and likely benefits for "registered partners." Since gay rights and gays remain deeply unpopular among Mexican nationals and those of Mexican origin. Dog fighting and cock fighting would be legal, since those are popular past-times for Mexican nationals and Mexican origin citizens. As the effect of English-language Culture in remaking socially conservative White men and women in large urban centers into largely child-less yuppies becomes stronger, ironically the more fertile Mexican origin citizens will wield far greater voting power, and remake society to their liking.
Largely undoing many of the key aspects of the White Liberal Society.
No one said that the Cultural gate keepers of English language media were smart. Merely powerful.
...Read more
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